Christian Heinrich Spiess (4 April 1755 – 17 August 1799) was a German writer of romances and later pulp fiction, horror stories.

Life

He was born in Freiberg in Saxony. For a time an actor, he was appointed in 1788 controller on the estate of Count Caspar Hermann von Künigl at Besdiekau in

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...

, where he died, almost insane, the result of his weird fancies, on 17 August 1799. Spiess, in his ''Ritter-'', ''Räuber-'' and ''Geister-Romane'', as they are called—stories of knights, robbers and ghosts of the "dark" ages—the idea of which he borrowed from Goethe's '' Götz von Berlichingen'' and

Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendsh ...

's '' Die Räuber'' and ''

Der Geisterseher ''The Ghost-Seer'' or ''The Apparitionist'' (full title: ''Der Geisterseher – Aus den Papieren des Grafen von O**''; literally, ''The Ghost-Seer – From the papers of the Count of O**'') is a novel by Friedrich Schiller. It first app ...

'', was the founder of the German ''Schauerroman'' (shocker), a style of writing continued, though in a finer vein, by Carl Gottlob Cramer (1758–1817) and by Goethe's brother-in-law,

Christian August Vulpius Christian August Vulpius (23 January 1762 – 25 June 1827) was a German novelist and dramatist. His sister married the noted German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Biography He was born at Weimar, and was educated at Jena and Erlangen. In ...

. These stories, appealing largely to the vulgar taste, made Spiess one of the most widely read authors of his day. The most popular was a ghost story of the 13th century, ''Das Petermännchen'' (1793); this was an influence on the work of Ann Radcliffe and the novel '' The Monk'' by Matthew Gregory Lewis. The novel involves a knight who is encouraged by an evil

ghost A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to rea ...

(in the form of a dwarf) to commit rape, incest and

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...

, before being torn to pieces by the Devil. Among his other ''Schauerroman'' stories were ''Der alte Überall'' and ''Nirgends'' (1792); ''Die Löwenritter'' (1794), and ''Hans Heiling, vierter und letzter Regent der Erd- Luft- Feuer- und Wasser-Geister'' (1798). Beside numerous comedies, Spiess wrote, anticipating Schiller, a tragedy ''Maria Stuart'' (1784), which was in the same year performed at the court theatre in Vienna.

Bibliography

* Karl Goedeke, ''Grundrisz zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung'', v. 506 sqq. *Müller-Fraureuth, ''Die Ritter- and Räuberromane'' (Halle, 1894).

References

Attribution: *

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Spiess, Christian Heinrich 1755 births 1799 deaths 18th-century German novelists German male novelists Pulp fiction writers 18th-century German male writers People from Freiberg 18th-century deaths from tuberculosis Tuberculosis deaths in the Czech Republic