author
Gustav Freytag
1816–1895
Best known for the dramatic structure later called Freytag’s Pyramid, he was also a major 19th-century German novelist, playwright, and journalist. His fiction often focused on middle-class life, ambition, and the social changes of his time.
11 Audiobooks
Das Nest der Zaunkönige Erzählung aus dem Anfang des 11. Jahrhunderts
by Gustav Freytag
Debit and Credit Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag
by Gustav Freytag
Vanha kauppiaskoti
by Gustav Freytag
Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. II.
by Gustav Freytag
Soll und Haben, Bd. 1 (2) Roman in sechs Büchern
by Gustav Freytag
Ingo: Romaani
by Gustav Freytag
Die Technik des Dramas
by Gustav Freytag
Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. I.
by Gustav Freytag
The Lost Manuscript: A Novel
by Gustav Freytag
About the author
Born in Kreuzburg, Silesia, on July 13, 1816, Gustav Freytag studied philology at Breslau and Berlin before beginning his career in academic life. He later turned toward journalism and literature, becoming widely known in German-speaking Europe as a novelist, dramatist, and cultural commentator.
Freytag’s most famous novel is Debit and Credit (Soll und Haben), and he also wrote the historical cycle The Ancestors (Die Ahnen). Alongside his fiction, he became especially influential for his book Die Technik des Dramas, where he described the five-part dramatic pattern now commonly remembered as Freytag’s Pyramid.
He died in Wiesbaden on April 30, 1895. Although some of his social and political views now feel very much of his era, his name still survives in discussions of storytelling because of the lasting impact of his ideas about plot and dramatic form.