Hebbel, Friedrich (Wesselburen, Dithmarschen, 1813-63, Vienna), a mason's son, lived in poverty in his native market town until he was 22. His father, who had tried in vain to force the boy to manual labour, died in 1827. Hebbel's mother was devoted to her sons, but could make no provision for them. For eight years Hebbel carried out duties as clerk (Kirchspielschreiber) to J. J. Mohr, the parish mayor and magistrate (Kirchspielvogt), with whom he lodged. Though highly sensitive about his humble station, he benefited from his employer's library. In 1835, through the influence of Amalie Schoppe, he went to Hamburg in order to prepare for university study.
In 1836 Hebbel sampled university life at Heidelberg, attending lectures on law, history, and philosophy. Six months later he moved to Munich where he found greater opportunities to pursue his intellectual interests. In 1839 poverty forced him to return on foot to Hamburg. Meanwhile he had heard of his mother's death, and of that of Emil Rousseau, a young lawyer, who had been his only close friend in Heidelberg. From his early Hamburg days until the age of 30 Hebbel remained dependent on the generosity of an unmarried woman, Elise Lensing, who shared her modest earnings as a seamstress with selfless devotion. Upon his return she nursed him through a serious illness caused by his privations. She bore him two sons who died in infancy.
The decade of Hebbel's close relationship with Elise, whom he refused to marry, were years of intense inner conflict. He believed in his vocation as a writer, to which he was prepared to sacrifice all. He first proved his aptitude as a dramatist in Judith (1841). This prose play was followed by the verse Genoveva (1843). His first comedy, Der Diamant (1847, completed in 1841), derives from established models, principally Kleist's Der zerbrochne Krug. The play's bitter temper reflects Hebbel's natural inclination towards tragedy. The distinction between tragedy and comedy was to him a matter not of idea, but of form. In 1842 he published a collection of poems (Gedichte). His writings secured him a grant from Christian VIII, King of Denmark and sovereign of his native province, which he used to satisfy his urge for travel. He studied for a few months in Copenhagen, where he was in contact with the Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen (1768-1844). Having applied unsuccessfully for a chair of aesthetics at Kiel University, he turned his back on the north and went to Paris for a year (1843-4). He met Heine, but he was lonely in the French capital, crippled by poverty and personal problems. He completed the domestic tragedy Maria Magdalene (1844), and on the advice of a loyal friend, Felix Bamberg, wrote the Vorwort zur Maria Magdalena betreffend das Verhältnis der dramati-schen Kunst zur Zeit und verwandte Punkte (1844, see Maria Magdalene). The Vorwort and an earlier tract on theory, Mein Wort über das Drama! (1843), written in response to provocative criticism by J. L. Heiberg, earned him a doctorate from Erlangen University (1844). A further essay, Über den Stil des Dramas, was written in 1847. A despondent Hebbel resumed his travels and journeyed to Italy. In Naples he met H. Hettner. The southern environment and climate afforded a respite, but the Danish grant ran out and was not renewed. The decision not to return to Elise and to Hamburg was virtually taken when Hebbel set out for Vienna, where, in fact, he settled for the remainder of his life.
Hebbel's love for the gifted actress Christine Enghaus and their subsequent marriage (1846) introduced stability and a lively partnership into his life, though H. Laube for years obstructed their collaboration with the Burgtheater. In Vienna Hebbel completed a one-act tragedy in blank verse, Ein Trauerspiel in Sizilien (1847), which contains a strong element of social criticism and is an attempt at tragicomedy, and a three-act tragedy in prose, Julia (1851), a successor to Maria Magdalene. The following years were highly productive. Herodes und Mariamne (1849) was nearing completion during the street fighting of 1848 (see Revolutionen 1848-9). The three-act Märchen-Lustspiel in blank verse, Der Rubin (1851), begun in 1849, is based on Hebbel's own Märchen Der Rubin (published by Th. Mundt in 1843), which he had first planned in 1836. He dedicated the play to F. G. Kühne. From his early conception of this work derives his motto ‘Wirf weg, damit du nicht verlierst!’, suggesting that the retention of one's inner worth depends on the abandonment of one's most precious possession. Many variations on this seemingly paradoxical principle can be traced throughout his work, including his treatment of the theme of the Nibelungen treasure. Hebbel's Märchen-Lustspiel is set in Baghdad. The youth Assad, by throwing away a precious ruby, breaks the evil spell which has turned Princess Fatime into a unique precious stone. He thus unwittingly wins her hand and the Kalif's crown. The play was not appreciated at its first performance on 21 November 1849 at the Burgtheater.
Hebbel turned to a religious drama, Moloch, and then wrote his two-act play in flowing blank verse, Michel Angelo, which he dedicated to Robert Schumann. The play is a kind of Künstlerdrama, and owes its inspiration to Kühne, who had impressed Hebbel by his understanding of the artist who pursues his creative work regardless of public indifference, a view which Hebbel endorses in the play. It is an introduction to the first of his two ‘deutsche Trauerspiele’, the five-act tragedy in prose Agnes Bernauer (1852). It has as its theme the necessity for sacrifice on the part of the ruler and, more strikingly, for the sacrifice of an innocent individual. This theme is linked with the idea that perfect beauty constitutes tragic guilt, a conception peculiar to Hebbel. Gyges und sein Ring (1856), a five-act tragedy in blank verse, originates from Hebbel's desire to accommodate political and ethical ideas in classical form. Hebbel's last completed tragedy and his second German tragedy is the dramatization of the medieval Nibelungenlied, Die Nibelungen. Ein deutsches Trauerspiel in drei Abteilungen (1862). To him the Nibelungen epic represented Germany's only national literary heritage of universal appeal. The evolution of mythologies and of history, and the exposure of the workings of the human mind are the forces directing the ‘watchmaker’ who claimed, after he had been assured of the success of his Nibelungen, that he had merely restored an old clock.
Though Hebbel had by now abandoned his Moloch, he still contemplated a Christus, a project which he envisaged as a combination of drama and oratorio. His interest in the relationship between music and drama is reflected in Ein Steinwurf oder Opfer um Opfer. Ein musikalisches Drama (posth., 1883), which he wrote for the Russian composer Anton Rubinstein (1830-94), who paid for it but did not set it to music. Conscious of the power of his vision, but hindered by the unequal flow of creativity, Hebbel concentrated more and more, as death drew near, on Demetrius. He had originally planned to complete Schiller's fragment in time for the centenary of Schiller's birth. The work reached the fifth act and, although unfinished, assimilated ideas which show a pervasive grasp of present and future political issues and their dependence on the intricacies of human ethics and spirituality.
Hebbel referred to his brief novel Schnock. Ein niederländisches Gemälde (1850, written in 1837) as ‘ein kleines Büchlein’. It is his longest narrative work, and owes its inspiration to early reading of Jean Paul, and to the cholera epidemic of the thirties, which shocked him into his grim brand of humour. In 1855 Hebbel published seven Novellen, notable for their density of form: Matteo, Herr Haidvogel und seine Familie, Anna, Pauls merkwürdige Nacht, Die Kuh, Der Schneider Nepomuk Schlägel auf der Freudenjagd, and Eine Nacht im Jägerhause. Hebbel's only epic, Mutter und Kind. Ein Gedicht in sieben Gesängen (1859) is written in the flexible hexameters of Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea, and earned him a prize instituted to commemorate Goethe's work. Hebbel published Neue Gedichte in 1848, and in 1857 Gedichte von Friedrich Hebbel, his final collected and revised edition. His poetry includes the cycles Dem Schmerz sein Recht, Des Dichters Testament, and Sonette, as well as epigrams. His extensive writings on literature, art, and travel also include commentaries on the events of 1848. They reveal his preoccupation with human existence in isolation, with ethical and metaphysical philosophy, mythology, and religion. Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben were written between 1846 and 1854, Selbstbiographie für Saint René Taillandier and Selbstbiographie für F. A. Brockhaus (modelled on the former) in the fifties. Hebbel's valuable Tagebücher were begun on 23 March 1835 and continued into the year of his death. The sub-title to the Erstes Tagebuch is indicative: ‘Reflexionen über Welt, Leben und Bücher, hauptsächlich aber über mich selbst, nach Art eines Tagebuchs’. Emil Kuh was Hebbel's first biographer and editor (Friedrich Hebbels sämmtliche Werke, 12 vols., 1865-7). Sämtliche Werke, edited by R. M. Werner, 1901 ff., consist of three parts: Werke, 12 vols., Tagebücher, 4 vols., and Briefe, 8 vols.; Werke, 5 vols., edited by G. Fricke, W. Keller, and K. Pörnbacher, appeared in 1963-7, and Neue Hebbel-Briefe, ed. A. Meetz, in 1963.
