WIDMANN, JOSEPH VICTOR (1842-191I poet, dramatist, novelist and literary critic, was born at Nennowitz (Moravia) on Feb. 20, 1842, and died at Bern on Nov. 6, 1911. In 1880 he became feuilleton editor of the Berner Bund, and in this capacity he exercised for 3o years an authoritative sway as critic of German and German-Swiss literature. Among the most important of his own works are Arnold von Brescia (1867), a tragedy; Buddha (1869), a philosophic epic, which might be described as a forerunner of Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra and Spitteler's Prometheus und Epimetheus; Mose und Zipora (1874), an idyll; Oenone (1880), a drama; Die Patriezerin (1888), a novel of life in Bern; Die Maikdferkomodie, "Cockchafer Comedy" (1897), a charming allegorical play, which may pos sibly have furnished Rostand with the idea of Chantecler ; and Der Heilige und die Tiere (1905), another dramatic poem in which his interest in the animal world and its right to poetic existence are demonstrated. The last is his profoundest poetical
utterance. Widmann was one of the first to champion the genius of Carl Spitteler (q.v.), with whom his friendship dated from childhood days at Liestal.