GUTZKOW, MARL (1811.78). A dis tinguished German novelist and dramatist, born in Berlin. Ile studied theology and philosophy in Berlin and early contributed to literary journals. He subsequently studied law and political sci ences at Heidelberg and Munich. hut devoted him self exclusively to literature. His early fiction is satirically skeptical, as is implied in the title of his first significant novel, Wally, die Zweifterin (1835), for which he was imprisoned and all his writings forbidden, with the usual result of making them and. him widely This work is usually taken as the starting point of the school known as Young Ger many, literary reformers heralding the demo cratic upheaval of 1848. After his release from prison Gutzkow went to Hamburg, and wrote four powerful dramas: Richard Savage (1839); Zopf and Schwert (1844) ; Das Urbild des Tartiiffe (1847) ; Uriel Acosta .(1848), and others of less merit. In 1847 he went to Dresden as director of the Court Theatre (till 1850), and wrote two remarkable novels, Die Ritter vont Geiste (9 vols., 1850-52), and Der Zauberer von
Roar (9 vols., 1859-61). From 1852 to 1862 he edited the family weekly Unterhallungen am hiluslichen Herd. In 1864 he had an attack of insanity, and though after his recovery he con tinued to write voluminously, he never regained his power. Gutzkow's strong controversial pur pose obscured his artistic genius, but his work has profoundly influenced the popular thought of modern Germany, and gives one of the best pictures we have of the intellectual life and the social struggle of his generation and nation. Consult: Priilss, Das junge Deutschland (Stutt gart, 1892) ; Frenzel, Erinverungen and Strii mungen (Leipzig, 1890) ; Houben, Studien fiber die Dramen Gutzkows .(Jena, 1899) ; Caselmann, Karl Gutzkows Stellung zu den. religios-ethisehen Problemen seiner Zeit (Augsburg, 1900).