caricaturist composer draftsman jurist music critic writer author
Hoffmann was born on January 24, 1776 in Kaliningrad, Russia. His ancestors, both maternal and paternal, were jurists. His father, Christoph Ludwig Hoffmann (1736-1797), was a barrister in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), as well as a poet and amateur musician who played the viola da gamba. In 1767 he married his cousin, Lovisa Albertina Doerffer (1748-1796).
Between 1781 and 1792 Hoffmann attended the Lutheran school or Burgschule, where he made good progress in classics. He was taught drawing by one Saemann, and counterpoint by a Polish organist named Podbileski. In 1792, when little over sixteen years old, he entered the university of Königsberg, with a view to preparing himself for a legal career.
In the summer of 1795 Hoffmann began his practical career as a jurist in Königsberg, but his mother's death and the complications in which his love-affair threatened to involve him made him decide to leave his native town and continue his legal apprenticeship in Glogau (Głogów). In the autumn of 1798 he was transferred to Berlin, where the beginnings of the new Romantic movement were in the air. Music, however, had still the first place in his heart, and the Berlin opera house was the chief centre of his interests. In 1800 further promotion brought him to Posen (Poznań), where he gave himself up entirely to the pleasures of the hour. Unfortunately, however, his brilliant powers of caricature brought him into ill odour, and instead of receiving the hoped-for preferment in Posen itself, he found himself virtually banished to the little town of Płock on the Vistula. His leisure was spent in literary studies and musical composition. In 1804 he was transferred to Warsaw, where, through J. E. Hitzig (1780-1849), he was introduced to Zacharias Werner, and began to take an interest in the later Romantic literature. But in spite of this literary stimulus, his leisure in Warsaw was mainly occupied by composition; he wrote music to Brentano's Die lustigen Musikanten and Werner's Das Kreuz an der Ostsee. The arrival of the French in Warsaw and the consequent political changes put an end to Hoffmann's congenial life there, and a time of tribulation followed. A position which he obtained in 1808 as musical director of a new theatre in Bamberg availed him little, as within a very short time the theatre was bankrupt and Hoffmann again reduced to destitution. But these misfortunes induced him to turn to literature in order to eke out the miserable livelihood he earned by composing and giving music lessons. The editor of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung expressed his willingness to accept contributions from Hoffmann, and here appeared for the first time some of the musical sketches which ultimately passed over into the Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier. This work appeared in four volumes in 1814 and laid the foundation of his fame as a writer. Meanwhile, Hoffmann had again been for some time attached, in the capacity of musical director, to a theatrical company, whose headquarters were at Dresden. In 1814 he gladly embraced the opportunity that was offered him of resuming his legal profession in Berlin, and two years later he was appointed councillor of the Court of Appeal (Kammergericht). Hoffmann had the reputation of being an excellent jurist and a conscientious official; he had leisure for literary pursuits and was on the best of terms with the circle of Romantic poets and novelists who gathered round Fouque, Chamisso and his old friend Hitzig. Unfortunately, however, the habits of intemperance which, in earlier years, had thrown a shadow over his life, grew upon him, and his health was speedily undermined by the nights he spent in the wine-house, in company unworthy of him. He was struck down by locomotor ataxy, and died on the 24th of July 1822.
(Excerpt from Meister Martin Der Küfner Und Seine Gesellen...)
(A lawyer by day and a creator of a world of fantasy by ni...)
("The Sandman" (German: "Der Sandmann", 1816) is a short s...)
(E. T. A. Hoffmann's novella, "Mademoiselle de Scudéri. A ...)
Hoffmann married Marianna Tekla Michalina Rorer, whose Polish surname was Trzcińska). They moved to Płock in August 1802.
