HEYSE, PAUL

HEYSE, PAUL (1830–1914), German author and Nobel Prize winner. Heyse was born in Berlin and became one of the outstanding and most controversial figures in late 19th-century German literature. His father was a Christian, and professor at the University of Berlin, and his mother an assimilated Jewess. After graduating from Berlin University, he traveled to Italy, where he found inspiration for his tales in verse and prose novellen. The best known of the latter was L'Arrabiata (1853) while, of the former, Der Salamander (1867) was unrivaled in its genre. In 1854, King Maximilian II of Bavaria called the promising young writer to Munich, where he joined the school of lyricists headed by Emanuel Geibel. This group, which resembled the French Parnassians, devoted itself to the perfection of form rather than innovation of subject matter. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, Heyse was fiercely attacked by the rising generation of German naturalists for sacrificing virility to elegance of diction, and for dealing with foreign (especially Italian) themes rather than with the vital events of contemporary Germany. His best novels were Kinder der Welt (1873), on religious and social problems, and Im Paradies (1875), about artistic life in Munich. By 1910, when Heyse became the first German writer to gain the Nobel Prize for literature, the polemics directed against him came to an end. His lyrics and novellen then found an honored place in German literature. A Hebrew translation of Heyse's drama Die Weisheit Salomons was published by S.L. Gordon\>\> (1896). His collected works appeared in 38 volumes in 1872–1914; a new series, also in 38 volumes, appeared in 1902–12. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. Raff, Paul Heyse (1911); J.F. Klein, Beitraege zu Paul Heyses Novellentechnik (1920). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Werner (ed), Paul Heyse, Eine Bibliographie seiner Werke (1978); M. Krausnick, Paul Heyse und der Muenchner Dichterkreis, (1974); S.V. Moysi (ed.), Paul Heyse, Muenchner Dichterfuerst im buergerlichen Zeitalter, (exhibition catalog, 1981); G. Kroes-Tillmann, Paul Heyseitalianissimo. Ueber seine Dichtungen und Nachdichtungen, (1993); K. Koebe, Die Paul Heyse Rezeption zwischen 1850 und 1914. Kritische Wuerdigung und dichterisches Selbstbewusstsein im Wechselspiel, (2000); N. Nelhiebel, Epik im Realismus. Studien zu den Versnovellen von Paul Heyse (2000); R. Berbig and W. Hettche (ed.), Paul Heyse, Ein Schriftsteller zwischen Deutschland und Italien (2001). (Sol Liptzin / Konrad Feilchenfeldt (2nd ed.)