author
Wilhelm Meinhold
1797–1851
A Pomeranian pastor turned storyteller, he became best known for blending folklore, history, and literary trickery in tales that felt uncannily like lost old manuscripts. His most famous work, The Amber Witch, helped give German Gothic fiction one of its most memorable hoaxes.
3 Audiobooks
About the author
Born on February 27, 1797, on the island of Usedom in Pomerania, Wilhelm Meinhold was a Lutheran clergyman as well as a writer. He studied at the University of Greifswald and served in church posts in places including Koserow and Krummin before later moving to Berlin.
Meinhold is remembered above all for Maria Schweidler, die Bernsteinhexe (The Amber Witch), published in 1843. He first presented it as if it were a genuine old manuscript, and its convincing historical voice briefly fooled readers into thinking they were reading a real seventeenth-century record.
He also wrote Sidonia von Bork, another dark historical tale rooted in Pomeranian legend. Although his career began in the church, his lasting reputation comes from the eerie, inventive fiction that linked local history, superstition, and the Gothic imagination.