Menzel

Menzel, WOLFGANG, an eminent German author, was the son of a medical practitioner, and was born at Waldenburg, in Silesia, 21st June 1798. He studied at Jena and Bonn, was for four years schoolmaster at Aarau in Switzerland, and in 1825 returned to Germany. He first made himself known in the literary world by his witty Streckverse (1823). He subsequently lived mainly in Stuttgart, where he died 23d April 1873. He edited and contributed to literary magazines, and wrote a very large number of works—poems, romances, histories, literary criticism, political polemics, and Christian theology. The most important were a history of Germany (1825; Eng. trans. 1848), of German literature (1827; Eng. trans. 1840), of German poetry (1858), of Europe (1853–57), and of the world (Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, 16 vols. 1862–72), on Prussia's place in Germany (1866 and 1870), mythological researches (1842), the pre-Christian doctrine of immortality (1869), and autobiographical Denkwürdigkeiten (1876). He was almost constantly involved in controversy, attacking with equal zeal theological rationalists and political radicals, all whose tendencies seemed 'dangerous' to the Christian religion or the German monarchies, such as 'the Young Germany party' after 1830. Börne (q.v.) retaliated in the Franzosenfresser ('Frenchman-eater').