FREYTAG, GUSTAV (1816-1895), German novelist, was born at Kreuzburg, in Silesia, on July 13, 1816. He studied phi lology at Breslau and Berlin, and in 1838 took the degree with a remarkable dissertation, De initiis poeseos scenicae aped Ger manos. In 1839 he settled at Breslau, as Privatdocent in German language and literature. His comedy Die Braut f ahrt, oder Kunz von der Rosen (1844), had some success, but he made his name by his comedy Die Journalisten (1853), one of the best German comedies of the 19th century, the subject of which was drawn from his own experience. In 1847 he edited, with Julian Schmidt, 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 till 1870, when for a short time he edited a new periodical, Im neuen Reich. His fame became universal with the publication in of his novel of the counting house, Soll and Haben, which was translated into almost all the languages of Europe. It was cer tainly the best German novel of its day, impressive by its sturdy but unexaggerated realism. Its main purpose is the recommenda tion of the German middle class as the soundest element in the nation. His powerful advocacy of the hegemony of Prussia in his Grenzboten gained him the friendship of the duke of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, whose neighbour he had become on acquiring the estate of Siebleden near Gotha. At the duke's request Freytag was attached to the staff of the crown prince of Prussia in the cam paign of 1870, and was present at the battles of Worth and Sedan. Before this he had published another novel, Die verlorene Hand schri f t (1864), a description of Leipzig society, in which he en deavoured to do for German university life what in Soll and Haben he had done for commercial life. His Bilder aus der deut schen Vergangenheit, a popular account of the history and man ners of the Germans, has been compared to Green's Short History of the English People. In 1872 he began a work with a similar patriotic purpose, Die Ahnen, a series of historical romances in which he unfolds the history of a German family from the earliest times to the middle of the 19th century. His other works include an autobiography (Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 1887) ; Ge sammelte Aufsatze, chiefly reprinted from the Grenzboten (1888) ; Der Kronprinz and die deutsche Kaiserkrone; Erinner ungsblatter (1889). He died at Wiesbaden on April 3o, Freytag's Gesammelte Werke were published in 22 vols. at Leipzig (1886-89) . His V ermischte Au f siitze have been edited by E. Elster (2 vols., Leipzig, 1901-o3). On Freytag's life see, besides his auto biography mentioned above, the lives by C. Alberti (Leipzig 189o) and F. Seiler (Leipzig, 1898) . See also Flugenschrif G. Freytag (5925), published by the city library of Frankfort-on-Main; and A. Kohut, Gustav Freytag als Patriot and Politiker (1916).