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KARL EDUARD VON HOLTEI (1798-188o)

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Originally appearing in Volume V13, Page 620 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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KARL EDUARD VON

HOLTEI (1798-188o)  , German poet and actor, was born at Breslau on the 24th of
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January 1798, the son of an officer of Hussars . Having served in the Prussian army as a volunteer in 1815, he shortly afterwards entered the university of Breslau as a student of law; but, attracted by the stage, he soon forsook
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academic
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life and made his debut in the Breslau theatre as Mortimer in Schiller's Maria Stuart . He led a wandering life for the next two years, appearing less on the stage as an actor than as a reciter of his own poems . In 1821 he married the actress Luise Rogee (1800-1825), and was appointed theatre-poet to the Breslau stage . He next removed to Berlin, where his wife fulfilled an engagement at the Court theatre . During his sojourn here he produced the vaudevilles Die Wiener in Berlin (1824), and Die Berliner in Wien (1825), pieces which enjoyed at the time
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great popular favour . In 1825 his wife died; but soon after her
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death he accepted an engagement at the Konigsstadter theatre in Berlin, when he wrote a number of plays, notably Lenore (2829) and Der alte Feldherr (1829) . In 1830 he married Julie Holzbecher (1809–1839), an actress engaged at the same theatre, and with her played in
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Darmstadt . Returning to Berlin in 1831 he wrote for the composer Franz Glaser (1798–1861) the text of the opera
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Des Adlers
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Horst (1838), and for Ludwig
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Devrient the drama, Der dumme Peter (1837) . In 1833 Holtei again went on the stage and toured with his wife to various important cities,
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Hamburg,
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Leipzig,
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Dresden, Munich and Vienna . In the last his declamatory powers as a reciter, particularly of Shakespeare's plays, made a furore, and the poet-actor was given the appointment of manager of the Josefstadter theatre in the last-named city . Though proud of his successes both as actor and reciter, Holtei
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left Vienna in 1836, and from 1837 to 1839 conducted the theatre in Riga .

Here his second wife died, and after wandering through

Germany reciting and accepting a short engagement at Breslau, he settled in 1847 at
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Graz, where he devoted himself to a
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literary life and produced the novels Die Vagabunden (1851), Christian Lammfell (1853) and Der letzte Komodiant (1863) . The last years of his life were spent at Breslau, where being in poor circumstances he found a home in the Kloster der barmherzigen Briider, and here he died on the 12th of
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February 1880 . As a dramatist Holtei may be said to have introduced the "
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vaudeville " into Germany; as an actor, although remaining behind the greater artists of his time, he contrived to fascinate his audience by the dramatic force of his exposition of character; as a reciter, especially of Shakespeare, he knew no
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rival . August Lewald said of Holtei that by the energy of his poetic conception and plastic force he brought his audience round to his own ideas; and he added, " an eloquence such as his I have never met with in any other German." Holtei was not only a stage-poet but. a lyric-writer of great charm . Notable among such productions are Schlesische Gedichte (183o; loth ed., 1893), Gedichte (5th ed., 1861), Slimmen des Waldes (2nd ed., 1854) . Mention ought also to be made of Holtei's interesting autobiography, Vierzig Jahre (8 vols., 1843—1850; 3rd ed., 1862) with the supplementary
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volume Noch ein Jahr in Schlesien (1864) . Holtei's Theater appeared in 6 vols . (1867); his Erzdhlende Schriften, 39 vols . (1861-1866) . See M . Kurnick, Karl von Holtei, can Lebensbild (188o) ; F . Wehl, Zeit and Menschen (1889) ; O .

Storch, K. von Holtei (1898) .

End of Article: KARL EDUARD VON HOLTEI (1798-188o)
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