WOLFGANG

MENZEL (1798-1873)  , German poet, critic and literary historian, was born on the 21St of June 1798, at Walden-burg in Silesia, studied at Breslau, Jena and Bonn, and after living for some time in Aarau and Heidelberg finally settled in Stuttgart, where, from 1830 to 1838, he had a seat in the Wurttemberg Diet . His first work, a clever and original volume of poems, entitled Streckverse (Heidelberg, 1823), was followed in 1824-1825 by a popular Geschichte der Deutschen in three volumes and in 1829 and 183o by Rubezahl and Narcissus, the dramatized fairy-stories upon which his reputation as a poet chiefly rests . In 1851 he published the romance of Furore, a lively picture of the period of the Thirty Years' War; his other writings include Geschichle Europas, 1789-1815 (2 vols . Stuttgart, 1853), and histories of the German War of 1866 and of the Franco-German War of 1870-71 . From 1826 to 1848 Menzel edited a " Literaturblatt " in connexion with the Morgenblatt; in the latter year he transferred his allegiance from the Liberal to the Conservative party, and in 1852 his " Literaturblatt " was revived in that interest . In 1866 his political sympathies again changed, and he opposed the " particularism " of the Prussian " junkers and the anti-unionism of south Germany . He died on the 23rd of April 1873 at Stuttgart . His library of 18,000 volumes was afterwards acquired for the university of Strassburg .