C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801–1836)
Grabbe, Christian Dietrich (gräb’b
). A German dramatic poet; born in Detmold, Dec. 11, 1801; died there, Sept. 12, 1836. Developing from an unhappy boy to a man of brilliant powers and ripe scholarship, his incurable passion for drink spoiled his married life and his fortunes, though Heine, Tieck, and others, persuaded him to spasmodic reform; he was successively lawyer, actor, and soldier. Yet he won a place in German drama second only to Goethe and Schiller. His plays are striking and original in conception, and commanding in execution. The impression they leave is of an uncontrolled, discordant, and unrestful genius. ‘Hannibal,’ ‘Don Juan,’ and ‘Faust,’ the fragment entitled ‘Marius and Sulla,’ and ‘The Hermann Battle,’ exemplify these conditions in a marked degree.