RICHTER, JOHANN PAUL FRIEDRICH 1825), usually called JEAN PAUL, famous German author, was born at Wunsiedel, in Bavaria, on March 21, 1763. His father was a school master and organist at Wunsiedel, but in 1765 he became a pastor at Joditz near Hof, and in 1776 at Schwarzen bach, where he died in 1779. After attending the gymnasium at Hof, Richter went in 1781 to the university of Leipzig. Unable to maintain himself at Leipzig he returned in 1784 to Hof, where he lived with his mother. From 1787 to 1789 he served as a tutor at Topen, a village near Hof ; and afterwards he taught the children of several families at Schwarzenbach.
Richter's first work was Gronliindische Prozesse and Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren, the former of which was issued in 1783 84, the latter in 1789. In later life Richter had little sympathy with their satirical tone. His next book, Die unsichtbare Loge, a romance, published in 1793, had all the qualities which were soon to make him famous, and its power was immediately recog nized. He then produced in rapid succession Hesperus (1795), Biographische Belustigungen enter der Gehirnschale einer Riesin (1796) , Leben des Quintus Fixlein (1796), Blumen- Frucht- und Dornenstiicke, oder Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des Armenadvo katen Siebenkiis (1796-97), Der Jubelsenior (1797), and Das Kampaner Tal (1797). This series of writings won for Richter an assured place in German literature.
In 1797 he went to Leipzig, and in the following year to Weimar, where he had much pleasant intercourse with Herder, by whom he was warmly appreciated. He did not become intimate with Goethe and Schiller, to both of whom his literary methods were repug nant; but in Weimar, as elsewhere, his good talk and genial manners made him a favourite in general society. In 1801 he married Caroline Meyer, whom he met in Berlin in 180o. They lived first at Meiningen, then at Coburg; and finally, in 1804, they settled at Bayreuth. Here Richter spent a quiet, simple and happy life, constantly occupied with his work as a writer. In 1808 he was delivered from anxiety as to outward necessities by the prince-primate, K. T. von Dalberg, who gave him a pension of a thousand florins. Before settling at Bayreuth, Richter had pub lished his most ambitious novel, Titan ; and this was followed by Flegeljahre (1804-5), two works which he himself regarded as his masterpieces. His later imaginative works were Dr. Katzenbergers Badereise (1809), Des Feldpredigers Schmelzle Reise nach Fleitz (1809), Leben Fibels (1812), and Der Komet, oder Nikolaus Marggraf In V orschule der Aestlietik (1804) he expounded his ideas on art; he discussed the principles of education in Levana, oder Erziehungslehre (1807) ; and the opinions suggested by current events in Friedenspredigt (18o8), Diimmerungen fur Deutschland (1809), Mars and Phobus Thronwechsel im Jahre 1814 (1814), and Politische Fastenpredig ten (1817). In his last years he began Wahrheit aus Jean Pauls Leben, to which additions from his papers and other sources were made after his death by C. Otto and E. Forster. In 1821 Richter
lost his only son, and never quite recovered from the shock. He died of dropsy, at Bayreuth, on Nov. 14, 1825.
Schiller said of Richter that he would have been worthy of admiration "if he had made as good use of his riches as other men made of their poverty." And it is true that in the form of his writings he never did full justice to his great powers. In working out his conceptions he found it impossible to restrain the expression of any powerful feeling by which he might happen to be moved. He was equally unable to resist the temptation to bring in strange facts or notions which occurred to him. Hence every one of his works is irregular in structure, and his style lacks directness, precision and grace. But he had an amazingly fertile imagination and a surprising power of suggesting great thoughts by means of the simplest incidents and relations. Richter was a great nature-lover and deeply religious in spirit ; to him visible things were but the symbols of the invisible, and in the unseen realities alone he found elements which seemed to him to give significance and dignity to human life. His humour, the most distinctive of his qualities, cannot be dissociated from the other characteristics of his writings. It determined to some extent the form in which he embodied even his most serious reflections. It is sometimes extravagant and grotesque but never harsh or vulgar, and generally it springs naturally from the perception of the incongruity between ordinary facts and ideal laws. With all his wilfulness and eccentricity Richter was a man of a pure and sensitive spirit, with a passionate scorn for pretence and an ardent enthusiasm for truth and goodness.
Richter's Samtliche Werke appeared in 1826-28 in 6o vols., to which were added 5 vols. of Literarischer Nachlass in 1836-38. Editions of selected works appeared in 16 vols. (1865), in Kdrschner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur (edited by P. Nerrlich, 6 vols., 1884-87). The chief collections of Richter's correspondence are: Jean Pauls Briefe an F. H. Jacobi (1828) ; Briefwechsel Jean Pauls mit seinem Freunde C. Otto (1829-33) ; Briefwechsel zwischen. II. Voss und Jean Paul (1833) ; Briefe an eine Jugendfreundin (1858) ; P. Nerrlich, Jean Fouls Brief wechsel mit seiner Frau and seinem Freunde Otto (1902). See further the continuation of Richter's autobiography by C. Otto and E. Forster (1826-33) ; R. 0. Spazier, J. P. F. Richter: ein biographischer Kom mentar zu dessen Werken (5 vols., 1833) ; F. J. Schneider, Jean Pauls Altersdichtung 0900, and Jean Pauls Jugend and erstes Auftreten in der Literatur (1906). All Richter's more important works have been translated into English, Quintus Fixlein and Schmelzles Reise, by Carlyle ; see also Carlyle's two admirable essays on Richter.