Otto Ludwig

Who was Otto Ludwig?

Otto Ludwig was a German dramatist, novelist and critic born in Eisfeld in Thuringia. He was one of Germany's first modern realists and one of the most notable dramatists of the period.

His father, who was syndic of Eisfeld, died when he was twelve years old, and he was brought up amidst uncongenial conditions. He had devoted his leisure time to poetry and music, which unfitted him for the mercantile career planned for him. The attention of the Duke of Meiningen was directed to one of his musical compositions, an opera, Die Köhlerin, and Ludwig was enabled in 1839 to continue his musical studies under Felix Mendelssohn in Leipzig.

But ill health and constitutional shyness caused him to give up a musical career and he turned exclusively to literary studies, and wrote several stories and dramas. Of the latter, Der Erbförster attracted immediate attention as a masterly psychological study. It was followed by Die Makkabäer, in which the realistic method of Der Erbförster was transferred to an historical milieu, which allowed more brilliant coloring and a freer play of the imagination. With these tragedies, to which may be added Die Rechte des Herzens and Das Fräulein von Scuderi, the comedy Hans Frey, and an unfinished tragedy on the subject of Agnes Bernauer, Ludwig ranks immediately after Christian Friedrich Hebbel as Germany's most notable dramatic poet at the middle of the 19th century.