Raabe, Wilhelm

Related Category: German Literature: Biographies

(vĭl´hĕlm rä´bə), 1831–1910, German novelist, whose pseudonym was Jakob Corvinus. At 23 he began to write novels and tales of village life; the charming idyll Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse (1857) first brought him acclaim. Raabe's humor often serves to cover a more bitter irony. He later turned to the historical past and wrote such tales as the tragic “Des Reiches Krone” [the imperial crown] (1870). His novels include Der Hungerpastor (1864, tr. 1885) and Abu Telfan (1867; tr. Abu Telfan's Return from the Mountains of the Moon, 1881).

See studies by B. Fairley (1961), and I. S. Di Maio (1981).