Wilhelm Raabe

Wilhelm Raabe (1831-1910) was a German novelist who wrote in German from the Duchy of Brunswick. Early on he published under the pseudonym Jakob Corvinus. His work matters because it depicts everyday German middle-class life in the nineteenth century with humour and melancholy.

He was born in Eschershausen, then part of the Duchy of Brunswick. He attended schools in Holzminden and Wolfenbüttel and, from 1849 to 1854, worked as an apprentice in a bookshop in Magdeburg. There he read widely, from German folk tales to stories from other countries, which fed his imagination. Tired of the routine of the trade, he studied philosophy in Berlin between 1855 and 1857. While still a student he published Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse, which proved popular with German middle-class readers and encouraged him to leave university and devote himself to writing. He then lived in Wolfenbüttel and in Stuttgart, from 1862 to 1870, before returning to Braunschweig, where he stayed for the rest of his life.

His output is usually divided into three phases. In the first he wrote cheerful novels portraying German life. In the second, shaped by the pessimism of Schopenhauer, come Der Hungerpastor and Abu Telfan, works sometimes grouped as a trilogy although their plots are independent. In the third, the pessimism gives way to a humour recalling Dickens, though the subjects are more serious. Horacker (1876) is often cited as his best work, although opinions differ. His later output included many more novels, among them Das Odfeld and Die Akten des Vogelsangs. His influences shifted over time, from Jean Paul at the start to Dickens and Thackeray later on.

His legacy lives on in the critical edition of his complete works, begun in 1965 as Sämtliche Werke. Raabe also had a less familiar talent for painting: roughly 600 of his paintings survive, most of them in the Braunschweig Museum.