Friedrich Hebbel

Friedrich Hebbel (born March 18, 1813, Wesselburen, Schleswig-Holstein—died December 13, 1863, Vienna) was a poet and dramatist who added a new psychological dimension to German drama and made use of G.W.F. Hegel’s concepts of history to dramatize conflicts in his historical tragedies. He was concerned not so much with the individual aspects of the characters or events as with the historical process of change as it led to new moral values.

Hebbel was the son of a poor mason and was brought up in poverty. After his father’s death in 1827, he spent seven years as a clerk and messenger to a tyrannical parish bailiff. He founded a literary circle and had his first poems published in a local newspaper and in a Hamburg fashion magazine, whose editor, Amalie Schoppe, invited him to Hamburg in 1835 to prepare for the university. He was supported during this time, both spiritually and materially, by a seamstress, Elise Lensing, with whom he lived. At this time he started his Tagebücher (published 1885–87; “Diaries”), which became an important and revealing literary confession. Provided with a small income from his patrons, he went to Heidelberg to study law but soon left for Munich to devote himself to philosophy, history, and literature. Unable to publish his poems, however, he returned penniless and ill to Hamburg, where he was nursed by Elise Lensing.

Hebbel’s powerful prose play Judith, based on the biblical story, brought him fame in 1840 upon its performance in Hamburg and Berlin. His poetic drama Genoveva was finished in 1841. Still in need of money, Hebbel received a grant from the Danish king to spend a year in Paris and one in Italy. While in Paris in 1843 he wrote most of the realistic tragedy Maria Magdalena, published with a critical and philosophical preface in 1844 and performed in 1846. This skillfully constructed play, technically a model “tragedy of common life,” is a striking portrayal of the middle class.

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In 1845 he met the actress Christine Enghaus, whom he married in 1846. His life became more tranquil, although he was permanently weakened by rheumatic fever as a result of his earlier privation. The first tragedy written in this period of his life was the verse play Herodes und Mariamne (published 1850, performed 1849). A later work, the Die Nibelungen trilogy (1862)—including Der gehörnte Siegfried (“The Invulnerable Siegfried”), Siegfrieds Tod (“Siegfried’s Death”), and Kriemhilds Rache (“Kriemhild’s Revenge”)—grandiosely pictures the clash between heathen and Christian. The prose tragedy Agnes Bernauer (1852) treats the conflict between the necessities of the state and the rights of the individual. Gyges und sein Ring (1854; Gyges and His Ring), probably his most mature and subtle work, shows Hebbel’s predilection for involved psychological problems. His other works include two comedies, a volume of novellas and stories, collections of poems, and essays in literary criticism. On his 50th birthday, nine months before he died, he received the Schiller Prize.