author
August Peters
1817–1864
A German storyteller, journalist, and political activist, he wrote with the energy of someone who had lived through upheaval firsthand. His fiction and essays are closely tied to the democratic spirit of mid-19th-century Saxony.
1 Audiobook
Erzgebirgische Geschichten. Erster Band
by August Peters
About the author
Born in Taura in 1817 and dead in Leipzig in 1864, August Peters was a German writer who also published under the pen name Elfried von Taura. He is remembered as an Erzähler — a storyteller and narrator — and as a journalist whose work grew out of the lively, contested political culture of his time.
Peters took part in the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1840s in Saxony, and that experience shaped both his public life and his writing. Sources on his life describe him not only as an author, but also as a freedom-minded political figure and journalist, which helps explain the strong historical and social current running through his novels, novellas, and shorter prose.
He is also closely linked with the writer and women's rights pioneer Louise Otto-Peters, his wife, whose name often appears alongside his in biographical records. Today, August Peters is remembered as part of the broader world of 19th-century German literature: a politically engaged author whose stories were rooted in the struggles and ideals of his age.