Theodor Storm (1818-1888)
One of the great German realists, Storm was born in Husum in Schleswig. At the time, this region was part of Denmark. Storm studied law in Kiel and Berlin. After periods in Potsdam and Heiligenstaft, he returned to Husum in 1865 and became a magistrate. By this time, Schleswig had been incorporated into Prussia.
Storm is best known for two novellas:
Immensee (1849/1851)
Der Schimmelreiter (1888) / The Rider on the White Horse
Storm also wrote a number of brilliant Märchen which have been largely ignored by literary critics, with some honourable exceptions (see reading list below, Petrus W. Tax).
Two of Storm’s best Märchen are:
Hinzelmeier. Eine nachdenkliche Geschichte (1850)
Die Regentrude (1864)
Further Reading in English
Russell A. Berman, ‘The Integrity of Fiction in the Age of Realism: Theodor Storm’, in Realism and Romanticism in German Literature, ed. by Dirk Göttsche and Nicholas Saul (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2013), pp. 429-48
Clifford Albrecht Bernd, Theodor Storm: The Dano-German Poet and Writer (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2003)
Barbara Burns, Theory and patterns of tragedy in the later Novellen of Theodor Storm (Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1996)
D. A. Jackson, ‘Theodor Storm – The Provinical’, Publications of the English Goethe Society 55 (1986), 22-46
David Jackson, ‘Theodor Storm’s Democratic Humanitarianism: The Novella Im Schloss in Context’, Oxford German Studies 17 (1988), 10-50
György Lukács, Soul & Form, trans. by Anna Bostock, ed. by John T. Sanders and Katie Terezakis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), Chapter 5 on Theodor Storm, pp. 73-97
W. F. Mainland, ‘Theodor Storm’ in German Men of Letters, ed. by Alex Natan, vol. 1 (London: Wolff, 1961), pp. 147-68
E. A. McCormick, Theodor Storm’s Novellen: Essays on Literary Technique (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964)
Alan Menhennet, ‘Idyll and Reality in Storm’s Later Novellen’, Oxford German Studies 32 (2003), 127-54
Roger Paulin, The Brief Compass: The Nineteenth Century German Novelle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985)
Roger Paulin, ‘A Poem by Theodor Storm: Geh nicht hinein’, Publications of the English Goethe Society 80:2-3 (2011), 143-52
Andrew Webber, ‘The Uncanny Rides Again: Theodor Storm’s Double Vision’, Modern Language Review 84:4 (1989), 860-73
Andrew J. Webber, The Doppelgänger: Double Visions in German Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 283-316
Further Reading in German
Petrus W. Tax, ‘Storms Die Regentrude - auch “eine nachdenkliche Geschichte”’, Modern Language Notes (MLN), 97:3 (1982), 615-35
Web Link
https://annotext.dartmouth.edu/texts?language_id=10000
Der Schimmelreiter in German; click on a word for the English translation