Paul Heyse
Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse was a prominent German author born on March 15, 1830, in Berlin, and is notable as the first German recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1910. He was the son of Karl Wilhelm Heyse, a respected philologist, and Julie Heyse, who hailed from a notable Jewish family. After studying classical and romance languages, Heyse spent a transformative year in Italy, where he deepened his appreciation for art and literature. Settling in Munich, he gained recognition through the support of poet Emmanuel Geibel and took up a titular professorship, allowing him to focus on writing.
Heyse produced a vast body of work, including over fifty plays and more than one hundred novellas, with "L'Arrabbiata" and "Andrea Delfin" among his most notable novellas. He is celebrated for his poetry and translations of Italian literature, which significantly influenced German readers. Despite being categorized as a realist, his style is better described as poetic realism, marked by a commitment to beauty, psychological depth, and idealism. Heyse's literary contributions, characterized by their delicacy and depth, have left a lasting impact, while his capacity for friendship is evident in his extensive correspondence with various intellectuals of his time. He passed away in Munich on April 2, 1914.
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Paul Heyse
German short-story writer, novelist, and playwright
- Born: March 15, 1830
- Birthplace: Berlin, Prussia (now in Germany)
- Died: April 2, 1914
- Place of death: Munich, Germany
Biography
Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse (HI-zuh), the first German to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Berlin on March 15, 1830. His father, Karl Wilhelm Heyse, was an eminent professor of philology at the University of Berlin. His mother, Julie (Saaling) Heyse, came from a prominent Jewish family.
Heyse attended Berlin’s Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium and then studied classical languages and romance languages at the Universities of Berlin and Bonn. After he received a doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1852, he left on a scholarship for a year’s study in Italy, where he immersed himself in Italian art and literature.
On his return to Germany, Heyse settled in Munich, which became his home. There, the friendly influence of the poet Emmanuel Geibel brought him to the attention of Maximilian II, the king of Bavaria, who awarded Heyse a titular professorship at the University of Munich in 1854. This gave him freedom to devote himself entirely to writing, which he did. Although he had published his first novella, Der Jungbrunnen, in 1850, when he was twenty years old, beginning in 1854 his output—fiction, drama, poetry, prose, translations—became a flood. He was also an active critic. Together with Geibel, he founded Krokodil, a literary society devoted to combating naturalism and its effects.
In 1854 Heyse married Margarete Kugler, the daughter of an art historian, and lived happily with her until her death in 1862. Two years later he married Anna Schubart, with whom he spent the rest of a tranquil domestic life in their villa on the Luisenstrasse in Munich or in Villa Iolanda in Gardona, Italy.
Heyse had a great capacity for friendship, which is evident in his voluminous correspondence with such notables as the historian Jakob Burckhardt and the writers Theodor Storm, Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, and Eduard Moerike.
In 1910, when Heyse was eighty years old, he was ennobled by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the successor to Maximilian II. After that, he was proud and happy to style himself Paul von Heyse. The same year, Heyse’s contributions to literature achieved international recognition when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Heyse’s literary production slowed when he reached his eighties, but he continued writing. The last work published during his lifetime is his Letzte Novellen (last stories), dated 1914. He died of pneumonia in Munich on April 2 of the same year.
Between 1850 and 1905, Heyse wrote more than fifty plays, including tragedies, comedies, and Schauspiele. These were mostly unsuccessful, with the exception of Mary of Magdela, which achieved both fame and notoriety, having been censored in Berlin. Of his eight novels, his first, Children of the World was probably the most popular. His poetry, both tender love lyrics as well as lively verse, had many admirers. Selections from his Spanisches Liederbuch and Italienisches Liederbuch, as well as some of his other poems, were set to music by such composers as Hugo Wolf, Arnold Schoenberg, and Max Bruch. His fine translations of the works of Guiseppe Guisti, Giacomo Leopardi, and other poets and the plays of several dramatists brought Italian literature to many German readers. However, Heyse is best known for his novellas, of which he wrote more than one hundred. The most notable of these are L’Arrabbiata and Andrea Delfin. All of them are unified by a single controlling image according to his “falcon theory,” which he derived from the practice of Italian novelist Giovanni Boccaccio in the story of Federigo degli Alberighi and his falcon in the Decameron (1353).
Heyse has often been labeled a realist, but he is better called a poetic realist. He was a passionate antinaturalist who excluded ugliness and exaggeration from his work and who objected to ugliness and exaggeration in the work of others. All of his writings are carefully wrought and are characterized by delicacy, psychological depth, and unwavering idealism.
Bibliography
Brandes, Georg M. C. “Paul Heyse.” In Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1923. An enthusiastic account of Heyse’s literary career up to 1875.
Martin, Werner. Paul Heyse: Eine Bibliographie seiner Werke. New York: G. Olms, 1978. Lists all of Heyse’s writings and provides bibliographical information about them.
Silz, Walter. Realism and Reality: Studies in the German Novelle of Poetic Realism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954. Solid discussion of Heyse’s role in the development of the German Novelle of poetic realism.
Weing, Siegfried. The German Novella: Two Centuries of Criticism. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1994. A useful account of the theory of the novella from early German novelistic narratives to 1980. Heyse is treated in the section on poetic realism. Includes bibliographical references.