author
Alfred Biese
1856–1930
A German literary historian and educator, he wrote wide-ranging studies of poetry, realism, and the changing human feeling for nature. His work opens a window onto how literature reflects both culture and inner life.
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About the author
Born in Putbus on Rügen in 1856, Alfred Biese was a German literary historian, philologist, and school leader. He studied classical philology and German studies at the universities of Bonn, Greifswald, and Kiel, then worked for many years as a Gymnasium teacher before moving into senior educational posts.
Biese is best remembered for literary and cultural histories that connect texts with larger ideas and emotions. Among his best-known works are studies of metaphor, German literary history, Theodor Storm, and the development of the feeling for nature in classical and later European literature.
Later in his career he served as director of the Kaiser-Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Frankfurt am Main. He died in 1930, leaving behind a body of scholarship that helped bring literary history to a broad reading public.