E. T. A. Hoffmann Biography

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was an author, jurist, composer, music critic, and artist who was a major figure in German Romantic literature. A writer of fantasy and horror stories, he wrote the novella ‘The Nutcracker and the Mouse King’, which Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky adapted for his ballet, ‘The Nutcracker’. His stories also served as the inspiration for Jacques Offenbach's opera ‘The Tales of Hoffmann’, in which a fictionalized version of Hoffmann serves as the hero. Two of his other stories inspired the ballet ‘Coppélia,’ while Robert Schumann's ‘Kreisleriana’ is about his character Johannes Kreisler. Hailing from an affluent family of jurists, Hoffmann was taught classics, music, and drawing. Soon enough, he began writing. He held a variety of jobs throughout his life, from being a music teacher to clerk to city administrator. He lived in Berlin, Warsaw, Bamberg, Dresden, and Leipzig and was part of several courts. Hoffmann survived Napoleon Bonaparte's French empire. Despite all the hardships he encountered, he continued to write and create art. In the last years of his life, he became a target of Prussian royalty’s campaign against political dissidents.