KOTZEBUE, Augustus Frederick Ferdinand Von, a prolific German dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born on the 3d of May 1761, at Weimar, where his father was a counsellor of legation. He early evinced a propensity to poetry, and, whilst yet a boy, the representation of a play which he witnessed inspired in him such a love of the drama as determined his future destiny. lie received the rudiments of his education at his native place, and when he was about sixteen years of age he entered the university of Jena. Here he remained one year; but certain family circumstances occurred which induced him to remove to Duisburg, where he studied for a short time at the university, and returned to Jena in 1779. He was destined for the profession of the law, but the master passion predominated; and in gratifying his love of the drama, as well as literature in general, he consumed no inconsiderable portion of his time. If at this period he did not display great talent, he at least evinced wonderful versatility. Tragedy, comedy, ballads, essays, and other species of literary composition, came rapidly from his prolific pen. Their merits, however, he himself confesses in his autobiography, were exceedingly equivocal, although some of his plays were acted with applause. In his nineteenth year, he closed bis studies at Jena with taking the character of an opponent at a doctor’s degree. Soon afterwards he returned to his native place, where he diligently applied himself to the pandects, and was admitted as an advocate. But his addresses to the muses were still as assiduously paid as ever; and, in the ardour of his desire for distinction, he tried his skill in almost every species of composition, imitating, as caprice or admiration predominated, all the great writers of Germany, Schiller, Goethe, Wieland, Hermes, and others.

In 1781, on the invitation, it is said, of the Prussian ambassador, Kotzebue went to St Petersburg, where he obtained a situation under Von Bawr, general of engineers. The latter became his warm friend, and recommended him to the empress, who, on the death of Bawr, which occurred about two years afterwards, nominated him a counsellor. His imperial patroness first placed him in a judicial situation at Revel, and finally appointed him president of Esthonia, on which occasion he was ennobled. His literary ambition kept pace with his growing fortunes, and drama succeeded drama from his pen, with great, if not increasing rapidity. In 1790, on a journey to Pyrmont, he published his Doctor Bahrdt with the Iron Forehead, under the name of Knigge ; a work which created a considerable sensation at the time of its appearance, but by which he lowered himself not a little in public estimation. Having received his dismission from the imperial service, he retired for a time to an estate which he possessed at some distance from Narva: but, in 1797, he returned to Weimar, with a pension of 1000 guilders. Three years afterwards, he was induced to pay a short visit to Russia; but he had scarcely crossed the frontiers of the empire when he was arrested by order of Paul I. and sent to Siberia. This treatment of Kotzebue is said to have originated in a suspicion of the autocrat that he was the author of some political pamphlets, in which the emperor was personally attacked; but the exile was kept entirely ignorant of the cause of his banishment. He was, however, shortly afterwards recalled, and, as he informs us himself, well received by the emperor, who confided to his direction the theatre of St Petersburg.

After the death of Paul I. Kotzebue returned to Weimar,'and in 1802 was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Some disputes which he had with Goethe and the Schlegels induced him to remove to Paris, where the French literati flattered his love of adulation by the attentions which they paid him. It is not much to his credit that he repaid their kindness by the publication of a calumnious work entitled My Recollections of Paris. The Italians were treated in the same spirit of illiberality in his Recollections of Rome and of Naples. About the end of 1803 he commenced, in conjunction with Merakel, a journal entitled Der Freymüthige, The Sincere, in which Napoleon was virulently attacked. In 1806 he went again to Russia, and lived from 1807 on his estate in Esthonia, never ceasing to write against the imperial usurper of France. Literature and politics continued to engage the pen of Kotzebue until 1813, when, as counsellor of state, he followed the Russian head-quarters during the campaign of that year; and, in order more effectually to excite the nations against Napoleon, he published in Berlin the Russian-German National Gazette ( Volksblatt). After the affairs of Europe were decided by the victory of Waterloo, he went to St Petersburg; but was in 1817 commissioned by the Emperor Alexander to return to his own country, and report upon the state of literature and public opinion, for which he was to receive a salary of 15,000 roubles. He who had exerted himself so much in favour of Russia, sometimes, it is affirmed, at the expense of his native country, was not likely to be warmly welcomed on his return home. From the first he was looked upon as a spy; and the zeal which he displayed in his new employment soon confirmed this opinion, and prepared the way for his destruction. He established a literary weekly paper, in which judgment was passed on the publications of the day, and political opinions advanced, at once dishonourable and obnoxious to Germany, then awakening from its torpor, and heated with the expectation of concessions on the part of its rulers, and by delusive anticipations of representative systems. In his journal Kotzebue steadily ridiculed every attempt to form liberal institutions; and not only was every species of political amelioration opposed, but a marked enmity to the liberty of the press was exhibited. A private communication of his to the emperor of Russia, which had been obtained, it matters not how, was published in a German paper, and republished throughout the country; and its appearance excited a strong feeling of hostility and indignation against the author. Shielded as he was by the power of the autocrat, he found it necessary to quit Weimar for Manheim, where his literary and diplomatic labours were resumed with increased activity. Unfortunately for him, he began to point his pen more directly against the enthusiastic anticipations and theoretical notions of liberty which had become the distinguishing characteristic of the great mass of the students at the German universities. A spark of dangerous enthusiasm caught the heated and disordered mind of a young student named Sand, who doomed the versatile dramatist and venal party writer to the death of a Caesar, under the impression that he was only performing an act of heroic virtue in the cause of national liberty. Having obtained admission into the house of his victim, he deliberately murdered him, on the 23d of March 1819, after which he gave himself up to justice, and suffered on the scaffold. Kotzebue was three times married, and left thirteen children. He wrote about a hundred dramas, the best of which are the comedies, and even these are far from being first-rate productions. As a dramatist he is more artificial than natural, and more melodramatic and picturesque than profound in the knowledge of the human heart, or happy in the concoction of incident or illustration of manners. Some of his plays, however, have been translated into English, and adapted to the British stage with great success. His Misanthropy and Repentance, under the title of the Stranger, is a stock piece; and his Spaniards in Peru, or the Death of Rolla, metamorphosed into Pizzaro by Sheridan, was the most . successful play ever produced in this country. Kotzebue wrote a history of the German empire, and the Early History[7:12:763] of Prussia; but as a historian he is held in little esteem by his countrymen. (r. R. R∙)