KOTZEBUE, AUGUST FRIEDRICH FERDINAND VON (1761-1819), German dramatist, was born on May 3, 1761, at Weimar. In 1780 he completed his legal course at Duis burg, and was admitted an advocate. Through the influence of the Prussian ambassador at the Russian court, he entered the Russian service, and rose to be assessor to the high court of appeal in Reval. He was ennobled in 1785, and became president of the magistracy of the province of Estonia. In Reval he wrote the novels, Die Leiden der Ortenbergisc/ien Familie (1785) and Geschichte meines V aters (1788), and the plays Adelheid von Wulfingen (1789), Menschenhass und Reue (1790) and Die In dianer in England (1790). Kotzebue retired from the Russian service, and lived for a time in Paris and Mainz; he then settled in 1795 on his estate near Reval. Within a few years he published six volumes of miscellaneous sketches and stories, Die jiingsten Kinder meiner Laune (1793-96), and more than 20 plays, the majority of which were translated into several European lan guages. He was for a short time dramatist to the court theatre in Vienna, and then returned to his native town, but as he was not on good terms with Goethe, and had openly attacked the romantic school, his position in Weimar was not a pleasant one. He was returning to St. Petersburg, when he was, for some un known reason, arrested at the frontier and transported to Siberia. Fortunately he had written a comedy which flattered the vanity of the emperor Paul I. ; he was recalled, and presented with an estate from the crown lands of Livonia, and made director of the German theatre in St. Petersburg. He returned to Weimar when the emperor Paul died, but found it as impossible as ever to gain a footing there and turned his steps to Berlin, where in association with Garlieb Merkel (1769-1850) he edited Der Freimiitige (1803-07) and began his Almanach dramatischer Spiele (1803 20). Towards the end of 1806 he was once more in Russia; as councillor of state he was attached in 1816 to the department fo;• foreign affairs in St. Petersburg, and in 1817 went to Germany as a kind of spy in the service of Russia, with a salary of 15,000 roubles. In a weekly journal (Literarisches W ochenblatt) which he published in Weimar he scoffed at the pretensions of those Germans who demanded free institutions, and was obliged to move to Mannheim. He was especially detested by the young enthu
siasts for liberty, and one of them, Karl Ludwig Sand, a theologi cal student, stabbed him, in Mannheim, on March 23, 1819. Sand was executed, and the government made his crime an excuse for placing the universities under strict supervision.
Besides his plays, Kotzebue wrote several historical works, which, however, are too one-sided and prejudiced to have much value. Of more interest are his autobiographical writings, Meine Flucht nach Paris im Winter 1790 (i791), fiber meinen Aufenthalt in Wien (1799), Das merkwiirdigste Jahr meines Lebens (18oi), Erinnerungen aus Paris (1804), and Erinnerungen von meiner Reise aus Liefland nach Rom and Neapel (18o5). As a dramatist he was extraordinarily prolific, his plays numbering over 200 ; his popularity, not merely on the German, but on the European stage, was unprecedented. Kotzebue possessed an extraordinary facility in the invention of effective situations, and an unerring instinct for the theatre. Kotzebue is to be seen to best advantage in his comedies, such as Der Wildfang, Die beiden Klingsberg and Die deutschen Kleinstiidter, which contain admirable genre pictures of German life. These plays held the stage in Germany long after the once famous Menschenhass und Reue (known in England as The Stranger), Graf Benjowsky, or ambitious exotic tragedies like Die Sonnenjungfrau and Die Spanier in Peru (which Sheridan adapted as Pizarro) were forgotten.
Two collections of Kotzebue's dramas were published during his life time: Schauspiete (5 vols., 1797) ; Neue Schauspiele (23 vols., 1798 1820). His Siimtliche dramatische Werke appeared in 44 vols., in 1827-29, and again, under the title Theater, in 4o vols., in 1840-41. A selection of his plays in io vols. appeared at Leipzig in 1867-68. See also H. Diiring, A. von Kotzebues Leben (1830) ;W W. von Kotzebue, A. von Kotzebue (1881) ; Ch. Rabany, Kotzebu,e, sa vie et son temps (1893) ; W. Sellier, Kotzebue in England (19oi).