Heinrich Joseph von Collin

Who was Heinrich Joseph von Collin?

Heinrich Joseph von Collin, Austrian dramatist, was born in Vienna, on 26 December 1771. He received a legal education and entered the Austrian ministry of finance where he found speedy promotion. In 1805 and in 1809, when Austria was under the heel of Napoleon, Collin was entrusted with important political missions. In 1803 he was, together with other members of his family, ennobled, and in 1809 made Hofrat. He died on 28 July 1811 in Vienna.

His tragedy Regulus, written in strict classical form, was received with enthusiasm in Vienna, where literary taste, less advanced than that of northern Germany, was still under the ban of French classicism. But in his later dramas, Coriolan, Polyxena, Balboa, and Bianca della Porta, he made some attempt to reconcile the pseudo-classic type of tragedy with that of Shakespeare and the German romanticists. As a lyric poet, Collin has left a collection of stirring Wehrmannslieder for the fighters in the cause of Austrian freedom, as well as some excellent ballads.

His younger brother Matthäus von Collin, was, as editor of the Wiener Jahrbücher für Literatur, an even more potent force in the literary life of Vienna. He was, moreover, in sympathy with the Romantic movement, and intimate with its leaders. His dramas on themes from Austrian national history may be regarded as the immediate precursors of Grillparzer's historical tragedies.