LAUBE, HEINRICH (1806-1884), German dramatist, nov elist and theatre-director, was born at Sprottau, Silesia, on Sept. 18, 1806. He studied theology at Halle and Breslau (1826-29), and settled in Leipzig in 1832. Some early writings and his share in the literary movement known as Das junge Deutschland brought him under police surveillance and his works were con fiscated. On his return, in 1834, frpm a journey to Italy, under taken in the company of Karl Gutzkow, Laube was expelled from Saxony and imprisoned for nine months in Berlin. In 1837 he was again imprisoned for his revolutionary sympathies. In 1839 he returned to Leipzig, and began to write plays. Chief among his earlier productions are the tragedies Monaldeschi (1845) and Struensee (1847) ; the comedies Rokoko, oder die alten Herren (1846) ; Gottsched and Gellert (1847) ; and Die Karlsschfiler (1847), of which the youthful Schiller is the hero. In 1848 Laube was elected to the national assembly at Frankfurt-on-Main for the district of Elbogen, but resigned in the spring of 1849, when he was appointed artistic director of the Hofburg theatre in Vienna. This office he held until 1867, and in this period fall his finest dramatic productions, notably the tragedies Graf Essex (1856, still occasionally acted), and Montrose (1859), and his historical ro mance Der deutsche Krieg (1865-66, 9 vols.), which graphically
pictures a period in the Thirty Years' War. In 1869 he became director of the Leipzig Stadttheater, but returned to Vienna in 1870, where in 1872 he was director of the new Stadttheater; with the exception of a short interval he managed this theatre with bril liant success until his retirement from public life in 1880. Laube's work as theatre manager left its mark on the German stage, and he has given an invaluable record of his work in Vienna and Leipzig in Das Burgtheater (1868), Das norddeutsche Theater (1872) and Das Wiener Stadttheater (1875). He died at Vienna on Aug. 1, 1884. To his later years belong the novels Die Bohminger (188o), Louison (1881), Der Schatten-Wilhelin (1883), and his Erin nerungen, 1841-1881 (1882).