PICHLER, KARCILINE, one of the most eminent novelists of Germany, was born in 1769 at Vienna, where her father, Franz von Greiner, held several legal offices and court dignities. In 1796 she married councilor Andrew Pichler, and published her first work under the title of Oleiehnisse (Wien, 1800). • This was quickly followed by other writings, as the novels Oliver (Wien, 1802); Leonora (Wien, 1804); Beth (Wien, 1805), etc.; and the success which attended the appearance of these productions, encouraged her to try a more ambitious line of composition. In 1808 appeared ilgathokleR, which, according to some critics, is the best of her novels. In this work, she endeavored, in opposition to the views expressed by Gibbon, in his Ilbstory of the Decline of Me _11,,man Empire, to depict the ennobling effect of Christianity on the human mind. At the suggestion of Hormayr and other literary friends, who had been struck by the with which she threw herself into the spirit of the times of which she wrote, she turned her attention to the task of popularizing German history, with the view of foster ing a more general feeling of patriotism. Among her best works of this kind, which
appeared between 1811 and 1832, and the earlier of which preceded Scott's greatest historical novels, we may instance .GI.afen von Hohenberg (Ldp. 1811); Dic Belagerung Mien's von 1683 (Wien, 1824); Die Schweden in Prag (Wien, 1827); and Henriette von England (Wien, 1832); while of her social novels, the following are among the most popular: Frauentourde (Wien, 1808); Die Nebenbulder (Wien, 1821); and Zeitbilder (Wien, 1840). She died at Vienna in 1843 Her dramas were failures, and in her novels there is nit, a little tedious diffuseness, a remark which applies with equal truth to her auto biography, which appeared gt Vienna in 1844 under the title of ..Denkwardigkeiten a. m. Leben, and formed part of the edition of her collected works, published at Vienna in 1845 in sixty volumes.