Fritz Reuter

Fritz Reuter (born in Stavenhagen, 1810; died in Eisenach, 1874) was a novelist from northern Germany who made Low German a serious literary language in the nineteenth century. At a time when the dialect was widely seen as the speech of uneducated country people, he showed that it could carry long and complex stories, and that is why he still matters to readers of German regional literature.

His father was a mayor and local magistrate who also farmed, and Reuter was educated at home and later at grammar schools in Mecklenburg. He began studying law in Rostock in 1831, largely to satisfy his father, but he soon became involved in student fraternities with a political edge. After his arrest in 1833 he was sentenced to death for high treason; the sentence was commuted to thirty years in a Prussian fortress, and he was released in 1840 under an amnesty. He tried law again in Heidelberg but gave it up, worked on an estate, and after his father's death in 1845 found that he had been disinherited. He then turned to writing to earn a living.

His first poems were in standard German, but he found his voice in Low German. His early verse included humorous pieces and rural epics such as Kein Hüsung, which showed the harsher sides of village life in Mecklenburg. His greatest success came with Olle Kamellen, a sequence of semi-autobiographical tales about his youth, his imprisonment and his years as a farm manager. His style is humorous and observant, with well-drawn episodes and characters rather than a tightly built plot. His central subject is the life of farmers and rural people, with their conflicts and loyalties.

Reuter died in Eisenach in 1874. His collected works appeared between 1863 and 1868, and new editions followed in later decades. After the Second World War his writing regained attention, partly through the work of Friedrich Griese. Today several institutions keep his memory alive, including museums in Stavenhagen and Eisenach and a society in Neubrandenburg devoted to his work.