Zschokke, JOHANN HEINRICH DANIEL, an eminent German writer, was born at Magdeburg, March 22, 1771. He ran away from school, was some time a strolling playwright, then a student at Frankfort, afterwards lectured there and adapted plays, set out on travels and finally opened a boarding-school at Reichenau in the Grisons. In 1798 he published his Geschichte des Freistaats der drei Bünde in Rhätien, then removed to Aarau, where he was employed as a commissioner to settle the affairs of Unterwalden, Uri, Schwyz, and Zug; later he was a member of the Great Council of Aargau. He died at Aarau, June 27, 1848. His books include histories of Bavaria and of Switzerland, and a long series of tales, among them Der Creole, Alamontade, Jonathan Frock, Clementine, Oswald, and Meister Jordan. The most popular of all his writings was the Stunden der Andacht (1809-16), translated as Hours of Meditation and Reflection (1843). This was a Sunday periodical, supplying a complete exposition of modern rationalism, with an eloquence and zeal for sound morality worthy of the best days of orthodoxy.
Zschokke's collected writings fill 35 vols. (1851-54). A few of his tales (Goldmaker's Village, Lover's Stratagem, Veronica, &c.) have been translated into English. See his Selbstschau, a kind of autobiography (1842; Eng. trans. 1847); also Lives by Emil Zschokke (3d ed. 1876) and Born (1886), and Keller's Beiträge zur Politischen Thätigkeit H. Zschokkes 1798-1801 (Aarau, 1887).