WERNER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG ZACHARIAS (17681823)

This article appears in Volume V28, Page 524 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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WERNER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG ZACHARIAS (17681823) , German poet, dramatist and preacher, was born on the 18th of November 1768 at

Konigsberg

KONIGSBERG (Polish Krolewiec)

in Prussia. From his

mother

MOTHER

, who died a religious maniac, Werner inherited a weak and unbalanced nature, which his education did nothing to correct. At the university of his native place he studied law; but Rousseau and Rousseau's German disciples were the influences that shaped his view of life. For years he oscillated violently between aspirations towards the state of nature, which betrayed him into a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of rash and unhappy marriages, and a sentimental admirationin common with so many of the Romanticistsfor the Roman Catholic Church, which ended in 1811 in his conversion. Werner's talent was early recognized and obtained for him, in spite of his character, a small government post at Warsaw, which he exchanged after-wards for one at Berlin. In the course of his travels, and by correspondence, he got into

touch

TOUCH (derived through Fr. toucher from a common Teutonic and Indo-Germanic root, cf. " tug," " tuck," O. H. Ger. zucchen, to twitch or draw)

with many of the men most eminent in literature at the time; and succeeded in having his plays put on the stage, where they met with much success. In 1814 he was ordained priest, and, exchanging the pen for the pulpit, became a popular preacher at Vienna, where, during the famous congress of 1814, his eloquent but fanatical sermons were listened to by crowded congregations. He died at Vienna on the 17th of January 1823.
Werner was the only dramatist of the Romantic

movement

MOVEMENT

whothanks to the influence of Schillerwas able to sub-ordinate his exuberant

imagination

IMAGINATION

to the

practical

PRACTICAL

needs of the stage. His first tragedy, Die Sohne des Tals (1803-1804), is in two parts, and it was followed by Das Kreuz an der Osisee (18o6). More important is the Reformation drama Martin Luther, oder die Weihe der Kraft (1807), which, after his con-version to Catholicism, Werner recanted in a poem Weihe der Unkraft (1813). His powerful one-act tragedy, Der vierundzwanzigste Februar (1815, but performed 181o), was the first of the so-called " fate tragedies." Attila (1808), Wanda (181o) and Die Mutter der Makkabaer (182o) show a falling-off in Werner's

powers

POWERS, HIRAM (1805-1873)

.
Z. Werner's Theater was first collected (without the author's consent) in 6 vols. (1816-1818); Ausgewahlte Schriften (15 vols., 184o-1841), with a

biography

BIOGRAPHY (from the Gr. (3ios, life, and yp&4 , writing)

by K. J. Schutz. See also J. E. Hitzig, Lebensabriss F. L. Z. Werners (1823); H. Duntzer, Zwei Bekehrte (1873); J.

Minor

, Die Schicksalstragodie in ihren Hauptvertretern (1883) and the same author's volume, Das Schicksalsdrama (in Kiirschner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur, vol. 151, 1884); F. Poppenberg, Zacharias Werner (1893).

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