Wolfgang Menzel (21 June 179823 April 1873) was a German poet, critic and literary historian, who was born in Waldenburg (Wałbrzych) in Prussian Silesia.
Career overview
He studied at the 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 Württemberg Diet.
His first work, a clever and original volume of poems, entitled Streckverse (Heidelberg, 1823), was followed in 1824-1825 by a popular Geschichte der Deutschen in three volumes and in 1829 and 1830 by Rubezahl and Narcissus, the dramatized fairy-stories 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 writings include Geschichte Europas, 1789-1815 (2 vols. Stuttgart, 1853), and histories of the German War of 1866 and of the Franco-German War of 1870-71.