Gustav Freytag

Gustav Freytag (German: [ˈfʁaɪˌtaːk]; 13 July 1816 – 30 April 1895) was a German novelist and playwright.

Life

Freytag was born in Kreuzburg (Kluczbork) in Silesia. After attending the school at Oels (Oleśnica), he studied philology at the universities of Breslau (Wrocław) and Berlin, and in 1838 received his degree with a dissertation titled De initiis poeseos scenicae apud Germanos (Über die Anfänge der dramatischen Poesie bei den Germanen, English: On the Beginnings of Dramatic Poetry among the Germans). He became member of the student corps Borussia zu Breslau.

In 1839, he settled in Breslau, as Privatdozent in German language and literature, but devoted his principal attention to writing for the stage, achieving considerable success with the comedy drama Die Brautfahrt, oder Kunz von der Rosen (1844). This was followed by a volume of unimportant poems, In Breslau (1845), and the dramas Die Valentine (1846) and Graf Waldemar (1847). He at last attained a prominent position by his comedy, The Journalists (1852), one of the best German comedies of the 19th century.

In 1847, he moved to Berlin, and in the following year took over, in conjunction with Julian Schmidt, the editorship of Die Grenzboten, a weekly journal which, founded in 1841, now became the leading organ of German and Austrian liberalism. Freytag helped to conduct it until 1861, and again from 1867 until 1870, when for a short time he edited a new periodical, Im neuen Reich. In 1863 he developed what is known as Freytag's Pyramid.