Work
Though he was unfavourably reviewed by critics – many of whom saw his work as immoral – Kotzebue was one of the most popular writers of his time. In his essay "Why Do I Have So Many Enemies?", he blamed jealousy of his fame. He was politically conservative and cosmopolitan in outlook and spoke out against the antisemitism of student nationalists.
He was approached in 1812 by Beethoven, who suggested that Kotzebue write the libretto for an opera about Attila, which was never written. Beethoven did, however, produce incidental music for two of Kotzebue's plays, The Ruins of Athens (Beethoven's opus 113) and King Stephen (opus 117).
Besides his plays, Kotzebue wrote several historical works: his History of the German Empires was burned by nationalist students at the 1817 Wartburg Festival (which Sand attended).
Still read are his autobiographical writings, Meine Flucht nach Paris im Winter 1790 (1791), Über meinen Aufenthalt in Wien (1799), Das merkwürdigste Jahr meines Lebens (1801), Erinnerungen aus Paris (1804), and Erinnerungen von meiner Reise aus Liefland nach Rom und Neapel (1805).
As a dramatist he was extremely prolific: his plays numbered over 200 and were highly popular, not only in Germany but throughout Europe. His success, however, was seen as due less to any conspicuous literary or poetic ability than to his great facility in the invention of effective situations. He is at his best in comedies such as Der Wildfang, Die beiden Klingsberg and Die deutschen Kleinstädter, which contain cameos of German life. These plays held the stage in Germany long after the once-famous Menschenhass und Reue (Misanthropy and Repentance, but known in England as The Stranger), Graf Benjowsky, and ambitious exotic tragedies like Die Sonnenjungfrau and Die Spanier in Peru (which Sheridan adapted as Pizarro) were forgotten.
Theatre historians usually consider the runaway success of The Stranger, the English version of Menschenhass und Reue, in both England (where it opened in 1798) and the United States as one of the harbingers of the emerging popularity of theatrical melodrama, which dominated European and American stages for the first seventy-five years of the nineteenth century.
Two collections of Kotzebue's dramas were published during his lifetime: Schauspiele (5 vols., 1797); Neue Schauspiele (23 vols., 1798–1820). His Sämtliche dramatische Werke appeared in 44 volumes in 1827–1829, and again, under the title Theater, in 40 volumes in 1840–1841. A selection of his plays in 10 volumes appeared in Leipzig in 1867–1868. See Heinrich Doring, A. von Kotzebues Leben (1830); W. von Kotzebue, A. von Kotzebue (1881); Ch. Rabany, Kotzebue, sa vie et son temps (1893); W. Sellier, Kotzebue in England (1901).
Read more about this topic: August Von Kotzebue
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