Paul Heyse

* 15.03.1830 in Berlin; ✝ 02.04.1914 in Munich

Writer

Biography

Heyse’s artistic talent was discovered while he was still a schoolboy by the writer Emanuel Geibel, who supported him and introduced him to literary circles. Geibel and Heyse went on to become fast friends later, on account of their common literary endeavours.After obtaining his school-leaving certificate he began his studies as a classical philologist in Berlin, before going on to devote himself to art history and Romance languages at Bonn. This was the course he successfully completed in 1852.

In 1854 he followed King Maximilian II of Bavaria to his court in Munich, where he was a regular guest of the local artists’ and scholars’ ‘symposia’ and acquired a high literary reputation – a reputation which reached an international peak with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1910.

He worked for the Brockhaus publishing company in collaboration with Friedrich Bodenstedt, Ferdinand Freiligrath, Nicolaus Delius and others on a 38-volume translation of the dramatic works of Shakespeare, to which he contributed his translations of Anthony and Cleopatra and Timon of Athens.

Translations

• Antonius und Kleopatra (1867)
• Timon von Athen (1867)

Literature

Primary Literature

• L'Arrabbiata. Berlin, 1853.
• Colberg. München, 1865.
• William Shakespeare’s Dramatische Werke. Ed. Friedrich Bodenstedt. 38 vols. Leipzig, 1867-71.
• Ludwig Fulda, Paul Heyse und Adolf Wilbrandt über die Schlegel-Tiecksche Shakespeare-Übersetzung. Berlin, 1901.

Secondary Literature

• Bonter, Urszula: ‘Paul Heyse. Hofdichter und Publikumsschriftsteller’. In: Die höchste Ehrung, die einem Schriftsteller zuteil werden kann. Deutschsprachige Nobelpreisträger für Literatur. Ed. Krzysztof Ruchniewiczund Marek Zybura. Dresden, 2007. Pp. 61-88.
• Martin, Werner (ed.): Paul Heyse – eine Bibliographie seiner Werke. Mit einer Einführung von Norbert Miller. Hildesheim, 1978.

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