E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) · CatalogE. T. A. HoffmannE. T. A. Hoffmann; ETA Hoffmann; E.T.A. Hoffmann; E T A Hoffmann; ETAHoffmannE. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) · CatalogGerman Romantic writer, composer and jurist.
Author
E. T. A. Hoffmann
1776-1822 · German Romantic writer, composer and jurist
E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822), born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann in Königsberg, Prussia, trained in law and served for most of his life as a Prussian judicial official. He was also a composer, conductor and music critic, adopting the name Amadeus in honor of Mozart; he worked as a theater music director in Bamberg and wrote the opera Undine (1816). His fiction, including The Golden Pot, The Sandman, the novel The Devil's Elixirs and The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, made him a leading writer of German Romanticism, known for blending everyday life with the fantastic and uncanny. He died in Berlin in 1822, and his tales influenced writers such as Poe, Gogol and Dostoevsky as well as composers including Offenbach and Tchaikovsky.
Nutcracker and Mouse-King is a fairy tale by the German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, first published in 1816 in a collection of children's stories he produced with Carl Wilhelm Contessa and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. Nearly eighty years later, a French retelling by Alexandre Dumas became the basis of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker (1892).
