Grabbe, Christian Dietrich (Detmold, 1801-36, Detmold), only son of the head warder of the local prison, attended the Detmold Gymnasium, and was at an early age a prolific reader, gifted, imaginative, ambitious, but increasingly self-conscious about his humble origin. From 1820 to 1822 he studied law at Leipzig University, but dissipation began to undermine his health. He spent a year in Berlin, completing his first dramatic works: Herzog Theodor von Gothland; Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung; Marius und Sulla; and Nannette und Maria. Grabbe, who was too self-centred and quick to jealousy to make friends easily, also had a hatred of Jews, which caused him to throw away a chance of friendship with H. Heine. He vainly tried to become an actor, first in Dresden through the help of Tieck and subsequently in Hanover, Brunswick, and Bremen. After his return to Detmold in 1824, he passed his law examinations, and from 1826 to 1834 he worked in his native town in the army legal branch (Militärauditeur).
In 1827 he published through G. F. Kettembeil, a friend of his Leipzig days, his Dramatische Dichtungen (2 vols.) in which he included his work to date and a critical essay Über die Shakespearo-Manie. By 1829 he had completed Don Juan und Faust (1829), Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa (1829) and Kaiser Heinrich der Sechste (1830, the only two of a projected cycle of Hohenstaufen plays), Napoleon oder Die hundert Tage (1831), and the play (Märchenlustspiel) Aschenbrödel (1835), which Kettembeil refused to publish after its completion. In 1831 Grabbe became engaged to Henriette Meyer, who after a few months jilted him. In March 1833 he married Luise (after her marriage Lucie) Clostermeier, a woman ten years his senior, from whom he soon became estranged. He expressed his bitter disillusionment with life in Hannibal, perhaps his finest tragedy, written during the last months in Detmold.
As a dramatist he had at least one exhilarating experience during these years: on 29 March 1829 Don Juan und Faust was successfully performed with music by Albert Lortzing, who also played Don Juan. Grabbe's move to Frankfurt in 1834, without his wife, failed to improve his prospects for a more settled and less isolated existence. His friendship with his publisher Kettembeil came to a sudden end, and with it his purpose in coming to Frankfurt. Eduard Duller, one of his biographers, was virtually his only companion. To relieve his loneliness and also to find a publisher for Hannibal, Grabbe wrote to W. Menzel and Immermann for help. Immermann, who had already visited him in Detmold in 1831, invited him now to join him in Düsseldorf, where Grabbe arrived in December 1834. Through Immermann, Hannibal and the revised Aschenbrödel found a publisher. But although Grabbe supported Immermann's theatre by favourable criticism and a pamphlet Das Theater zu Düsseldorf, Immermann did not offer Grabbe the obvious service of producing one of his plays. For a short time Grabbe found in the young composer Norbert Burgmüller (1810-36) a new friend and fellow-sufferer. After he had written him a libretto, Cid, for an opera, Burgmüller's sudden death ended his stay in Düsseldorf. Grabbe returned to Darmstadt. Here he completed his last play, Die Hermannsschlacht (1838). He still had many plans, among them projected plays on Christ, Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great (see Friedrich II of Prussia), and Shakespeare, whom, in his own way, he admired and emulated.
Grabbe's egocentric, exhibitionistic, cynical, and yet naïve character, and his dissipated life are attributable to a possibly inherited psychopathic condition and to his humble parentage and spoilt upbringing. His odd appearance, slight physique, large head, and noble forehead have been described by contemporaries as representing the contradictions inherent in the man.
Grabbe's contribution to German drama has been appreciated more fully since realistic drama became predominant. A forerunner of the epic theatre (see Episches Theater), Grabbe could penetrate beneath the surface of reality by brilliant application of the grotesque, ruthlessly exposing hypocrisy. His historical plays are his greatest achievement, and are less remote from the modern stage than they were from the stage of his own day (several of his plays, including his first, were produced in the early 1970s). Grabbe's cult of the great man anticipates Nietzsche.
Sämtliche Werke, including letters, were published by E. Grisebach (4 vols., 1902-3), and by S. Wukadinović (6 vols., 1912);
The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
