HOFFMANN, ERNST THEODOR WILHELM (1776 1822), German romance-writer, who was also a composer, theatri cal manager, lawyer and many other things in the course of his diversified career, was born at Konigsberg on Jan. 24, 17 76. For the name Wilhelm he himself substituted Amadeus in homage to Mozart. His parents lived unhappily together, and when the child was only three they separated. He was brought up by an uncle, who had neither understanding nor sympathy for his dreamy and wayward temperament. He studied law at Konigsberg, and began to practise in the town in 1795. He then removed to Glogau, in 1798 to Berlin, and in 1800 received an official legal appointment (assessor) at Posen, which he lost, however, through having offended the authorities by his caricatures. He was sent to a little country town, Plozk, into virtual banishment. There he spent his leisure in musical composition, which was, throughout his life, his chief delight. In 1804 he received an appointment at Warsaw, where, through Zacharias Werner, he became acquainted with the work of Novalis, Tieck, Wackenroder and other romanticists. He was happy in Warsaw, where he wrote the music of Brentano's Lustige Musikanten and Werner's Kreuz an der Ostsee; also an opera Liebe and Ei f ersucht, based on Calderon's drama La Banda y la Flor. The French invasion (18o6) put an end to this peaceful existence, and Hoffmann lived an uncertain and troubled life until 1814. He was for a short time musical director of a theatre at Bamberg, then at Dresden, and wrote the sketches in the All gemeine musikalische Zeitung, ultimately collected, with others, in the Phantasiestiucke in Callots Manier (4 vols., 1814).
In 1814 he resumed his legal profession in Berlin, and two years later he was appointed councillor of the court of appeal (Kammergericht). Hoffmann had the reputation of being an ex cellent jurist and a conscientious official; he had leisure for lit erary pursuits and belonged to the circle of Romantic poets and novelists who gathered round Fouque, Chamisso and his old friend Hitzig. He had a great musical success with his opera Undine (1816), to libretto by Fouque, and, under the name of "Johannes Kreisler, Kapellmeister," he wrote the excellent musical criticisms on J. S. Bach—at that time almost forgotten—on Beethoven and others, which inspired Schumann's Kreisleriana. To his Berlin period belong the great series of tales which have placed Hoffmann in the short list of great story-tellers of the strange and grotesque. Unfortunately, the habits of intemperance which, in earlier years, had thrown a shadow over his life, grew on him, and his health was speedily undermined by the nights he spent in the wine-house. He died of locomotor ataxy on July 24, 1822.
Hoffmann is one of the master novelists of the Romantic move ment in Germany. He combined with a humour that reminds us of Jean Paul the same warm sympathy for the artist's standpoint towards life shown by early Romantic leaders like Tieck and Wackenroder; but he was superior to all in the almost clairvoyant powers of his imagination. His work abounds in grotesque and gruesome scenes; but the gruesome was only one outlet for Hoff mann's genius, and even here the secret of his power lay, not in his choice of subjects, but in the wonderfully vivid and realistic presentation of them. Every line he wrote leaves the impression behind that it expresses something felt or experienced ; every scene, vision or character he described seems to have been real and living to him. It is this realism, in the best sense of the word, that made him the great artist he was, and gave him so extraordinary a power over his contemporaries. His influence in France and in England was, in fact, as great as in his own country.
With respect to his work as a composer, his Undine still holds the stage in Germany as a minor classic of its period, though he will probably be longest remembered by musicians in having provided the inspiration and the book for Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann ("Tales of Hoffmann"), based on three of his fan tastic stories.
The first collected edition of Hoffmann's works appeared in 10 vols. (Ausgewahlte Schriften, 1827-28) ; to these his widow added 5 vols. in 1839 (including the 3rd ed. of J. E. Hitzig's Aus Hoffmanns Leben and Nachlass, 1823). There are good modern editions by E. Grisebach (15 vols., 1900) , W. Harich (15 vols., 1925), and others. There are many editions of selections, as well as cheap reprints of the more popular series. His writings on musical subjects were edited by Istel (19o7) and his musical compositions by Becking (2 vols., 1923). All Hoffmann's important works—except Klein Zaches and Kater Murr have been translated into English; The Devil's Elixir The Golden Pot, by Carlyle (in German Romance, 1827) ; The Serapion Brethren, by A. Ewing (1886-92) , etc. In France Hoffmann was even more popular than in England ; cf . G. Thurau, Hoff manes Erzahlungen in Frankreich (1896) . An edition of his Oeuvres com pletes appeared in 12 vols. in Paris (183o) . For bibliographies see Goedeke, Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, 2nd ed., vol. viii., pp. 468 seq. (1905) , and G. Salomon, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Bibliographie (Weimar, 1924). See also G. Ellinger, E. T. A. Hoffmann (1894) ; O. Klinke, Hoffmanns Leben and Werke vom Standpunkte eines Irrenarztes (1903) ; W. Harich, Das Leben eines Kiinstlers (1921) ; W. Mausolf, E. T. A. Hoffmanns Stellung zu Drama and Theater (1920) ; H. von Wolzogen, E. T. A. Hoffmann and R. Wagner (1906) , and E. T. A. Hoffmann, der deutscher Geisterseher 0922); R. von Schaukal, E. T. A. Hoffmann (Zurich, 1923) ; V. Ljungdorff, E. T. A. Hoffmann och ursprunget till hares konstnarskap (Lund, 1924).