KOTZEBUE, AUGUST FRIEDRICH FERDINAND '.ON ( 1761-1819). A German dramatist and Rus sian civil servant, born at Weimar. Kotzebue studied law at Jena (1777) and Duisburg (1778), but was drawn to the stage and organ ized an amateur theatre at Duisburg. In 1780 he opened a law office at Weimar, but he was in duced in 1781 to go to Russia, where he served successively as secretary to the Governor-General at Saint Petersburg, assessor of the Upper Court of Appeals, and president of the Magistrates Board of the Province of Esthonia. Ile married a lady of rank and was ennobled. At his wife's death he resigned the Russian service, visited Paris, and from 1795 to 179S lived chiefly at Friedenthal,• his country seat, near Reval. He had already become known by a series of tales and several sentimental dramas. His first col lected works, Die jiingsten Kinder Weiner !mune (5 vols., Leipzig, 1793-97), belong to this period. In 1798 Kotzebue was sum moned to Vienna as Court dramatist, but friction arose, and he was permitted to resign in 1800 with a pension. He intended to return to Rus sia, but on the frontier be was arrested as a spy and sent to Siberia. Czar Paul, pleased at hearing a translation of Kotzebue's little drama Der alte Leibkatseher Peters des Grosscn, re called him from exile, gave him office and an estate, and made him manager of the German theatre at Saint Petersburg. Kotzebue tells all this vivaciously in Das merk•iirdigste Jahr mcincs Lebr»s (2 vols., Berlin, 1801). After Czar Paul's death Kotzebue returned to Germany. lived successively in Weimar, Jena, and Berlin (1803), where he was made a member of the Academy of Sciences and shared in the editorship of Der Fregnnhitige, a literary In 1806 be went to KiMigsberg to make historical researches in the Prussian archives, as a result of which he published Preussens dllcre Gesehtehte (4 vols., Konigs
berg, 1809). His stay in K6nigsberg was short. The Napoleonic invasion obliged him to flee to Russia (1806), whence he kept up a lively jour nalistic warfare on Napoleon and his policy in Die Bic-a(' (1808-10) and Die Grille (1811-12). During these years he resided on his estate in Esthonia. He returned to Berlin as a Russian State Councilor in 1813, and was made Russian Consul-General at K6nigsberg, whence he was re in 1816 as counsel to the Foreign Office at Saint Petersburg. In 1817 he was sent as a salaried political spy to Germany, where he founded in the reactionary interest a journal. Das litterarisehe Wochenblatt. In this he attacked especially the German liberal student Bursehen schaf ten, and thus excited a student, Karl Lnd wig Sarid, to assassinate him at Mannheim. March 23. 1819. Kotzebue as a dramatist was remarkably prolific and witty, and a master of stage effects, but he was superficial and neglect ful of literary standards. Of some 216 record ed plays 98 are printed (23 vole., 1797-1823; 44 vol›,.. 1827-29; 10 vols.. 1868). The best known of them in England and America are The Stranger (.1Iensehenhass and Retie). and Pizarro (Die Spanivr 7n Peril); noteworthy also are Die bride?? Klingsbrry, Die ha/loner in Eng land, and Die deutsrhen Klei»stiidier. Kotzebue wrote also some weak novels. Consult. for Kot zehue's life, Daring (Weimar, 1830) ; W. von Kotzebue, August von Kotzebue, Urteile der Zeitgenossen and der Gcgenwort (Dresden, 1884) ; and Rabany, Kotzebue, sa vie et son temps (Paris, 1893).