MENZEL, Wolfgang (1798-1873), poet, critic, and historian, was born June 21, 1798, at Waldenburg in Silesia, studied at Breslau, Jena, and Bonn, and after living for some time in Aarau and Heidelberg finally settled in Stuttgart, where, from 1830 to 1838, he had a seat in the Wiirtemberg “landtag.” His first work, a clever and original volume of poems, entitled Streckverse (Heidelberg, 1823), was followed in 1824-25 by a popular Geschichte der Deutschen in three volumes, and in 1829 and 1830 by Rübezahl and Narcissus, the ballads upon which his reputation as a poet chiefly rests. In 1851 he published the romance of Furore, a lively picture of the period of the Thirty Years’ War; his other very numerous writings include Geschichte Europa's, 1789-1815 (1853), and histories of the German war of 1866 and of the Franco-German war of 1870-71. From 1825 to 1848 Menzel edited a “Literaturblatt” in connexion with the Morgenblatt ; in the latter year he transferred his allegiance from the Liberal to the Conservative party, and in 1852 his “Literaturblatt” was again revived in that interest. In 1866 his political sympathies again changed, and all his energies were employed to oppose the “particularism” of the Prussian “junkers” and the antiunionism of South Germany. He died on April 23,1873. His large private library of 18,000 volumes was afterwards acquired for the university of Strasburg.