HEBBEL, Friedrich (1813-18G3), a German poet and dramatist, was born of peasant parents at Wesselburen, in Schleswig-Holstein, 18th March 1813. In his fourteenth year he obtained a humble clerkship in his native parish, but already his ambition was soaring towards higher things. At an early period he began to practise poetical composition, and several of his poems published in the Modezeitung at Hamburg awakened such interest that several gentlemen procured him in his twenty-second year the meins of preparing himself in Hamburg for the university. He afterwards studied philosophy and history at Heidelberg and Munich. In 1811 he returned to Hamburg, where he published his first tragedy, Judith. In a journey which lie made to Copenhagen in 1842 he formed the acquaintance of Thorwaldsen and Oehlenschläger, and acquired the more substantial advantage of a travelling annuity from the king of Denmark. He accordingly visited Paris, after which he went to Italy, where he remained several years, staying principally at Rome, Pisa, and Palermo. Having in the spring of 1846 stopped at Vienna on his way home to Germany, he made the acquaintance of the actress Christine Engehaus, whom he married in May of the same year. His marriage led him to take up his permanent residence in Vienna, and probably deepened his interest in dramatic composition, which from that time chiefly occupied his attention. He died in 1863. His principal dramas are Genoveva, 1843; Maria Magdalena, 1844; Julia, 1851; Agnes Bernauer, 1855; and Die Nibelungen, 1862. They exhibit considerable skill in the portraiture of character, great glow of passion, and a true feeling for dramatic situations, but their poetic effect is marred by frequent extravagances which border on the grotesque, and by the introduction of ...