Zacharias Werner is German Romanticism’s most significant dramatist after Kleist. His disappearance from the canon has left our understanding of 19th-century drama incomplete, as his plays filled the gap between formulaic popular theater and the classical plays of Goethe and Schiller. Influenced among others by Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Kant, Tieck, A.W. Schlegel and Schleiermacher, Werner integrates epic, lyric and operatic forms and treats historical and mythological subjects and settings from various European cultures. His literary oeuvre of eight plays, several volumes of poetry, essays, and sermons has always had to compete with his notorious biography. The rhapsodic artist was thrice married, thrice divorced, and frequented literary salons and brothels alike. Goethe described…
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Citation: Emm, Amy. "Zacharias Werner". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 June 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5935, accessed 23 November 2024.]
