IMMERMANN, Karl Leberecht (1796-1840), dramatist and novelist, was born April 24th, 1796, at Magdeburg. From the gymnasium of his native city he passed in 1813 to study law at the university of Halle, but his career there was interrupted by the commotions consequent upon Napoleon’s escape from Elba. Immermann was prevented by illness from taking part in the earlier campaign, but he served in the Prussian army in 1815, was present at Ligny and Waterloo, and marched into Paris with Blücher. He went back to Halle to finish his studies, and held official positions at Oschersleben, Münster, and Magdeburg successively, before he became judge of a district on the Rhine, near Düsseldorf. The attention which his writings had already excited won him a warm welcome from the artistic circle which then made Düsseldorf famous, and there he spent the rest of his life, dividing his time amongst his judicial duties, his unsuccessful attempt to raise the theatre there to a permanent classic level of art and refinement, and a platonic literary friendship with the countess of Ahlefeldt. The last, begun at Münster and terminated only at his marriage with a granddaughter of the chancellor Niemeyer in 1839, exercised a marked influence over his genius. Immermann died at Düsseldorf, August 25, 1840. His dramas are perhaps better suited for the study than for the stage. Though sometimes rough and forbidding, they are marked by considerable insight into character; the comedies are by no means destitute of comic force. Signs of a close study of Shakespeare are abundant. In his semi-humorous romances Immermann is at his best, and it is by those that he will be chiefly remembered....