HOFFMANN, August Heinrich (1798-1874), known as Hoffmann von Fallersleben, German poet, philologist,, and historian of literature, was born at Fallersleben, in Lüneburg, April 2, 1798. He was educated at Helmstadt and Brunswick, and afterwards at the universities of Göttingen and Bonn. His original intention was to study theology, but he soon devoted himself entirely to literature. In 1823 he was appointed librarian to the university of Breslau, a post which he held till 1838. He was made extraordinary professor of the German language and literature at the university in 1830, and full professor in 1835; but he was deprived of his chair in 1842 in consequence of his Unpolitische Lieder, which gave much offence to the ruling classes of Prussia. He then travelled for some time in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and lived for two or three years in Mecklenburg, of which he became a naturalized citizen. The revolution of 1848 brought him back to Prussia, where he was restored to his rights, and received as a pension the “Wartegeld,” that is, the salary attached to a promised office which is not yet vacant. He married in 1849, and during the next ten years lived first in Bingerbrück, afterwards in Neuwied, and then in Weimar, where he was one of the editors of the Weimarische Jahrbuch. In 1860 he became librarian to the duke of Ratibor, and he retained this appointment till his death on the 20th of January 1874. Fallersleben was one of the best popular poets of modern Germany. In politics he ardently sympathized with the progressive tendencies of his time, and he was among the earliest and most effective of the political poets who prepared the way for the outbreak of 1848. As a poet, however, he acquired distinction chiefly by the ease, simplicity, and grace with which ...he gave expression to the passions and aspirations of ordinary life. Although he had not been scientifically trained in music, he composed melodies for many of his songs, and a considerable number of them are sung by all classes in every part of Germany.
The best known of his poetical writings is his Gedichte (8th edition, Berlin, 1874); but there is great merit also in ∖∖∖ s Alemannische Lieder (5th edition, Mannheim, 1843), Soldatenlieder (Mainz, 1851), Soldatenleben (Berlin, 1852), Rheinleben (Neuwied, 1865), and in his Fünfzig Kinderlieder, Fünfzig Neue Kinderlieder, and Alte und Neue Kinderlieder. His Unpolitische Lieder, Deutsch· Lieder aus der Schweiz, and Streiflichter are not without poetical value, but they are mainly interesting in relation to the practical movements of the age in which they were written. As a student of ancient Teutonic literature Fallersleben ranks among the most persevering and cultivated of German scholars, some of the chief results of his labours being embodied in his Horee Bclgicce, Fundgruben für Geschichte deutscher Sprache und Literatur, A ltdeutsche Blätter, Spenden zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte, and Findlinge. Among his editions of particular works may be named Reineke Vos, Monumenta Elnonensia, and Theophilus. Die Deutsche Philologie im Grundriss (1836) was at the time of its publication a valuable contribution to philological research, and historians of German literature still attach importance to his Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes bis auf Luther (1832; 3d ed., 1861), Unsere volksthumlichcn Lieder (3d ed., 1869), and Die deutschen Gesellschaftslieder des 16 und 17 Jahrh. (2d ed., 1860). In 1868-70 Fallersleben published in 6 vols, an autobiography, Mein Leben: Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen. See also Briefe von Hoffmann von Fallersleben und Moritz Haupt an Ferdinand Wolf (Vienna, 1874); Wagner, Hoffmann von Fallersleben, 1818-68 (Vienna, 1869); and Gottschall, Porträts und Studien (vol. v., Leipsic, 1876).
HOFFMANN, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm (1776-1822), German romance writer (for whose name Wilhelm his own substitute, in homage to Mozart, was Amadeus), was born at Königsberg, January 24, 1776. His parents, who lived unhappily together, separating a year or two after his birth, he was brought up in his grandmother’s house, under the care of a bachelor uncle. His relations seem to have been fairly puzzled at the waywardness, cunning, and precocity of the boy, who neglected his school lessons and hated routine, but applied himself with passionate zest to the study of music and painting, extemporized marvellously on the harpsichord, and with his pencil caricatured friend and foe alike with terrible facility. Incited by his friend Hippel, Hoffmann on leaving school turned to the hereditary profession of the law; but, as no immediate post offered itself, he gave lessons in music and painting, and wrote two novels, for which he could not find a publisher. A discreditable love episode with one of his pupils drove him at this time from Königsberg, and he went to act as assistant to another lawyer uncle at Gross-Glogau in Silesia. In 1798 he became referendary in the supreme court at Berlin, and iu 1800 passed his final examination and was appointed assessor to the court of Posen. Here he seems to have led a dissipated life, and to have contracted the habit of excessive drinking which marred his whole career. He subsequently made enemies in Posen by sending a series of scandalous caricatures for distribution at a masquerade ball, and his appointment was on this account changed to a councillorship at Plozk, where, having married ere this time, he spent two years in retirement, studying in his leisure hours the theory of music, translating Italian poetry, and sketching plans for future literary work; but in 1804, again in favour at headquarters, he was transferred as councillor to Warsaw. There he found a true friend in Hitzig, his colleague, and made the acquaintance of Werner, at whose request he set music to some parts of the Kreuz an der Ostsee. He soon became the centre of musical society in Warsaw, helped to institute a concert-house or “Ressource,” found leisure not only to paint its saloons but to compose music for its orchestra, and was actually conducting this orchestra before enthusiastic audiences when Warsaw was taken by the French in 1806. For some time he lingered in Warsaw; but in the spring of 1807, having recovered from a fever to find himself almost penniless, he returned to Berlin to seek some means of livelihood. His only child died in Posen while he was in Berlin; and, though he succeeded in obtaining the post of music-director to the Bamberg theatre, the theatre soon after became bankrupt, and Hoffmann was once more destitute. He now found occasional employment as a composer of operatic music, and, as a last resource, attempted authorship. The editor of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung enlisted his services, and in that paper appeared a series, afterwards published, with a preface by Jean Paul Richter, as Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier (1814; 4th ed., 1864). He composed at this time, among other things, a Miserere by order of the grand-duke of Würzburg, and, for the proprietors of the Bamberg theatre, music to Kotzebue’s opera Das Gespenst ; and he also gave lessons in music and drawing, decorated saloons, and painted portraits to order. The misery of his condition was enhanced by his wife’s illness and his own light-hearted recklessness. The money which he inherited at the death of his uncle did not suffice to pay his debts; and he had been reduced to selling his last coat for food when his friends obtained for him the post of music-director to another theatrical company, performing alternately at Dresden and Leipsic. Hoffmann was writing romances in a garret in Dresden, or, bedridden by gout, was drawing caricatures of the “verwünschte Franzosen” while Napoleon and the allied armies were struggling round its walls. In 1814 appeared his Vision auf der Schlachtfelde von Dresden; and in the same year, on the fall of Napoleon, he returned to Berlin, and was reinstated in the legal profession. Two years later he was appointed councillor in the supreme court, and from that time enjoyed a good income, a dignified position, and the society of his best friends. He was already, in virtue of his Fantasiestücke, regarded as one of the most notable romance writers of his day, but most of his works were yet to come. These followed each other in quick succession. Die Elixire des Teufels appeared in 1816; Nachtstücke in 1817; Seltsame Leiden eines Theaterdirektors in 1818; Die Serapionsbrüder, a collection of tales, in 1819-24; Klein Zaches, genannt Zinnober, in 1819; Prinzessin Brambilla in 1821; Meister Floh in 1822; and Lebensansichten des Katers Murr in 1821-22. He also composed the opera Undine, the libretto of which was prepared by Fouqué himself. It was performed with success in Berlin; but the music was lost in the subsequent destruction of the opera-house by fire. Hoffmann’s prospects in Berlin were ruined by the old habit of intemperance, which had grown upon him during the years of his poverty. We are told that his legal duties were scrupulously performed, and that the remainder of his day was spent in literary work, but that, when this was over, he avoided refined society, and his nights became a series of wild pothouse revels. His health soon gave way; and, after intense suffering from spinal paralysis, he died at Berlin, July 24, 1822. Der Feind, lιis last work, remained unfinished.
Versatility is the chief characteristic of Hoffmann’s genius, and it is also its greatest weakness. He is admitted to have been an excellent jurist. His paintings were clever, though fantastic. He was a popular composer and a brilliant romance-writer. But this very versatility prevented his rising to eminence in any one vocation; and, even as a romance-writer, in which capacity he will be longest remembered, he was deficient in some of the highest attributes. His imagination was unbounded, his wit light and acrid, his dialogue stirring. His descriptive passages, in their minute vividness, have been compared to those of Sir Walter Scott, and his romances abound in the superstitious and mythical, that daemonic element which is so peculiarly German, and which in Hoffmann amounted almost to a frenzy. But, with all this, a perusal of his writings leaves a disagreeable impression on the mind, a feeling ofdi≡satisfaction and unrest. They are the production of a misdeveloped nature, of a man full of feverish impulses, oddities, and weakness, not devoid of tenderness, but whose temper was unforgiving and malicious, whose prevailing mood was the sarcastic, and whose only religious creed was a blind, headlong fatalism. There is also a strong element in his writings which Carlyle in his biography of Hoffmann has called “playerlike,” a glitter which is of tinsel, a something “false, brawling, and tawdry.” His writings, like his character, are a curious mixture of what is really beautiful and rare with much that is petty and sordid. Their cleverness is irresistible; but the dignity of true greatness is not there.
Die Elixire der Teufels, his longest completed work, contains in a narrative form some of his own wildest and most revolting delusions; and the derisive Kater Murr, of which the third volume is wanting, is not less characteristic. Some of his smaller pieces have justly been thought the most pleasing and perfect of his works. Among these are Der goldene Topf Das Fräulein von Scudery, Doge und Dogaresse, and Meister Martin und seine Gesellen. The delicacy and finish of the last, slight though it is, have stamped it as Hoffmann’s masterpiece, A life of Hoffmann has been written by Hitzig, his colleague first in Warsaw and afterwards in Berlin, under the title of Hoffmanns Leben und Nachlass. A selection of his writings was published in Berlin, 1827-28, and five more volumes (including Hitzig’s life) were added by his widow in 1839. A selection of his writings by Kurz appeared in 1870, and an edition of his collected works, in 12 vols., in 1871—73. Most of his romances are to be obtained separately in the Universal-Bibliothek, a cheap edition of standard authors published at Leipsic. Die Blixire des Teufelshas been translated into English (Edin., 1824), and Carlyle has given us a biography of Hoffmann, together with a translation of one of the Fantasicstuckc, “Der Goldene Topf,’’ in his German Romance. (F. Μ.)
HOFFMANN, Friedrich (1660-1742), the most famous physician in a family that had been connected with medicine for 200 years before him, was born at Halle, February 19, 1660. He received his school educational the gymnasium of his native town, where he acquired that taste for and skill in mathematics to which he attributed much of his after success. At the age of eighteen he went to study medicine at Jena, whence in 1680 he passed to Erfurt, in order to attend Kasper Cramer’s lectures on chemistry. Next year, returning to Jena, he received his doctor’s diploma, and, after publishing a thesis, was permitted to teach. Constant study then began to tell on his health, and in 1682, leaving his already numerous pupils, he proceeded to Minden in Westphalia to recruit himself, at the request of a relative who held a high position in that town. After practising his profession at Minden for two years, Hoffmann made a journey to Holland and England, where he formed the acquaintance of many illustrious chemists and physicians. Towards the end of 1684 he returned to Minden, and during the next three years he received many flattering appointments. In 1688 he removed to the more promising sphere of Halberstadt, with the title of physician to the principality of Halberstadt; and on the founding of Halle university in 1693, his reputation, which had been steadily increasing, procured for him the primarius chair of medicine, while at the same time he was charged with the responsible duty of framing the statutes for the new medical faculty. He filled also the chair of natural philosophy. With the exception of four years (1708-12), which he passed at Berlin in the capacity of royal physician, without however giving up his professorship, Hoffmann spent the rest of his life at Halle in instruction, practice, and study, interrupted now and again by visits to different courts of Germany, where his services procured him honours and rewards. His fame became European. He was enrolled a member of many learned societies in different foreign countries, while in his own he became privy councillor. He died at Halle, on November 12, 1742.
Hoffmann’s writings, the result both of compilation and original research, have still a considerable suggestive value. His theories, though sometimes vague and even idle, contributed in some degree to introduce a revolution in medical science; while his doctrine of atony and spasm in the living solid as the sole cause of internal disorders turned the attention of physicians more directly to the primary moving powers of the system. He pursued with ardour the study of practical chemistry, and pharmacy owes to him several preparations which are still in general use. It was through Hoffmann also that many of the mineral springs of Germany first came into repute as health resorts.
Of his numerous writings a catalogue is to be found in Haller’s Bibliotheca Medicinoe Practicae. The chief is Medicina Rationalis Systematica, undertaken at the age of sixty, and published in 1730. It was translated into French in 1739, under the title of Médecine Raisonnée di Hoffmann. A complete edition of Hoffmann’s works, with a life of the author, was published at Geneva in 1740, to which supplements were added in 1753 and 1760. Editions appeared also at Venice in 1745, and at Naples in 1753 and 1793.
HOFFMANN, Johann Joseph (1805-1878), an eminent Chinese and Japanese scholar, was born at Würzburg on the 16th of February 1805. After studying in the philosophical department of the Würzburg university, the young man took to the stage in 1825; and it was only by an accidental meeting with the German traveller, Dr Siebold, in July 1830, that his interest was diverted to Oriental philology. From Siebold himself he acquired the rudiments of Japanese; and in order to take advantage of the instructions of Ko-ching-chang, a Chinese teacher whom Siebold had brought home with him, he made himself acquainted with Malay, the only language except Chinese which the Chinaman could understand. Such rapid advance did Hoffmann make that in a few years he was able to supply the translations for Siebold’s Nippon; and the high character of his work soon attracted the attention of older scholars. Stanislas Julien invited him to Paris; and he would probably have accepted the invitation, as a disagreement had broken out between him and Siebold, had not M. Baud, the Dutch colonial minister, appointed him Japanese translator with a salary of 1800 florins or <£150. The Dutch authorities were slow in giving him further recognition; and he was too modest a man successfully to urge his claims. It was not till after he had received the offer of the professorship of Chinese in King’s College, London, that the authorities made him professor at Leyden, and the king allowed him a yearly pension. In 1875 he was decorated with the order of the Netherlands Lion, and in 1877 he was elected corresponding member of the Berlin Academy. But these honours came almost too late; for a disease of the lungs from which he had long suffered terminated fatally on the 19th of January 1878.
Hoffmann’s chief work is his Japanese Dictionary. Though begun in 1839 it is still unfinished, for the difficulties against which he had to contend were immense. Unable at first to procure the necessary type, he set himself to the cutting of punches; and even when the proper founts were obtained he had to act as his own compositor as far as Chinese and Japanese were concerned. His Japanese grammar is a standard work; it was published in Dutch and English in 1867, and in English and German in 1876. Of his miscellaneous productions it is enough to mention “Japan’s Bezüge mit der Komischen Halbinsel und mit Schina” in Nippon, vii.; Yo-San-fi-Rok, L'art d'élever les vers à soie au Japan, par Ouck-aki Mouτikouni, Paris, 1848; “Die Heilkunde in Japan” in Mittheil. d. deutsch. Gesellsch. für Natur-und Völkerk. Ost-Asiens, 1873-1874; and Japanische Studien, 1877, dealing with Japanese poetry. The Dictionary is being continued by L. Serrurier.
For further details see Keπι in Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen ; ΛV. Vissering in Het Vaderland, 23d Jan. 1878; and Leiden Studenten-almanak i 1879.
