Career
His most well-known work of fiction was Sagen der Vorzeit (Legends of the Past), a seven volume idealized account of Germany in the middle ages. The work influenced several 18thand early 19th-century Gothic novelists in both Britain and France. According to the Germanist James Taft Hatfield, it also had an influence on Goethe"s Poem "Im Ernsten Beinhaus".