Karl Gutzkow

Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow ((1811-03-17)17 March 1811 in Berlin – (1878-12-16)16 December 1878 in Sachsenhausen) was a German writer and dramatist who promoted political and social reformism. He studied philosophy and theology with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher, and his early works, like the novel Maha-Guru, Geschichte eines Gottes (1833), were satirical. His 1835 novel Wally, die Zweiflerin led to his imprisonment and suppression, marking the start of the Young Germany movement. His plays, especially Uriel Acosta (1847, based on Uriel da Costa), influenced German and Yiddish theater.

Upbringing and education

Born to a poor Berlin war-office clerk, Gutzkow may have rebelled against his father's strict pietism in his later agnosticism.

He began studying philosophy and theology with Hegel and Schleiermacher at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin in 1829. For the Augsburg Confession's tercentenary in June 1830, Hegel delivered an address in Latin as rector, declaring that Protestant Prussia reconciled religion, philosophy, and ethical life (Sittlichkeit).

But news of the July Revolution in Paris stirred radical politics. After Frederick William III's birthday celebration, Gutzkow wrote:Hundreds of students thronged behind the barrier in front of which sat the professors, the government officials, the military. [...] The crown prince smiled, but everyone who read the newspapers knew that in France a king had just been knocked off his throne. [...] Hegel [...] announced the winners of the academic competitions [...]. I myself heard with one ear that I had won the prize in the philosophical faculty over six competitors, and with the other about a people who had overthrown a king, about the thunder of cannons and about thousands who had fallen in battle [...]. Scientific academic study lay behind me, history before me.