Ferdinand Gustav Kühne

Kühne, Ferdinand Gustav (Magdeburg, 1806-88, Dresden), was educated at the Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium, Berlin (where Theodor Mundt, was a younger contemporary), and at Berlin University. From 1835 to 1859 he was active in Leipzig as a journalist with the Zeitung für die elegante Welt (1835-42) and Europa (1846-59), of which he was owner as well as editor. He spent the last decades of his life in Dresden.

Kühne is now chiefly known for the title of his novel Eine Quarantäne im Irrenhause (1835), but he was also the author of a number of Novellen (Novellen, 1831, Klosternovellen, 1838), and of the novels Die Rebellen von Irland (3 vols., 1840) and Die Freimaurer (3 vols., 1855). His poems (Gedichte) appeared in 1831, and in 1859 he published a completion of Schiller's Demetrius. Kühne was an accomplished essayist (Weibliche und männliche Charaktere, 1838; Portraits und Silhouetten, 1843; Deutsche Männer und Frauen, 1851). His autobiography, Mein Tagebuch in bewegter Zeit (1863), is of historical value. Though he was not named in the federal denunciation of Young Germany (December 1835, see Junges Deutschland), Kühne's views and writings show affinity with this movement.