author
Gottlob Heinrich Heinse
1766–1813
A prolific late-18th-century German novelist and man of letters, he moved between writing, bookselling, and self-publishing. His work ranges from historical fiction to satirical and moral tales, reflecting the busy literary world of his time.
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About the author
Born in Gera in 1766, he is documented as a German writer, bookseller, private scholar, and self-publisher. Reference sources also place his later years in Linz and Vienna, showing a career that stretched across both literary and practical sides of the book trade.
Heinse appears to have been remarkably productive. Listings of his works include historical novels such as Kanut der Heilige, König der Wenden and Elise von Böhmen, along with later fiction and moral-satirical prose like Der Egoist und seine Geschwister and Die Kunst, auch in den Stürmen des Unglücks glücklich zu seyn. That mix suggests an author interested both in dramatic storytelling and in the social concerns of everyday life.
Sources are not fully consistent about his death year and place: some catalog-style entries give 1812 and Linz, while others give April 10, 1813, in Vienna. What is clear is that he belonged to the bustling German-language literary culture around the turn of the 19th century, leaving behind a sizable body of novels and prose works.