Ludwig Tieck

German poet, translator, editor, novelist and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

In 1799 Tieck published a translation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and he started a translation of Don Quixote (published 1799–1801). After 1802 Tieck’s creative powers apparently became dormant. He studied Middle High German, collected and translated Elizabethan plays, published new editions of 16th- and 17th-century German plays, and acted as adviser to the Shakespeare translation begun by August von Schlegel. He also published works by such contemporary German writers as Novalis and Heinrich von Kleist.

From 1825 to 1842 Tieck served as adviser and critic at the theatre in Dresden. During those years he became the greatest living literary authority in Germany after J.W. von Goethe. His creative energies were renewed; he turned away from the fantasy of his earlier work and found his material in contemporary middle-class society or history. In 1842 he accepted the invitation of Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia to go to Berlin, where he remained the rest of his years, and where, as in Dresden, he became the centre of literary society.

He died on 28 April 1853 in the morning between six and seven o'clock at age 79 in Berlin.