This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Discussion about the problems with the sole source used may be found on the talk page. (February 2012)

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2012)

Otto von Kotzebue
Born	December 30, 1787 Reval (Tallinn)
Died	February 15, 1846 (aged 58) Reval
Ethnicity	Baltic German
Citizenship	Russian Empire
Parents	August von Kotzebue

Coat of arms of Kotzebue family

Otto von Kotzebue (Russian Отто Евстафьевич Коцебу, Otto Evstaf'evič Kocebu) (December 30, 1787 – February 15, 1846) was a Baltic German navigator in Russian service.

The second son of August von Kotzebue, he was born in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia), then part of the Russian Empire. After attending the St Petersburg school of cadets, he accompanied Adam Johann von Krusenstern on his voyage of 1803–1806. On promotion to lieutenant, Kotzebue was placed in command of an expedition, fitted out at the expense of the imperial chancellor, Count Nikolay Rumyantsev, in the brig Rurik. In this vessel, with only twenty-seven men, including the naturalists Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz and Adelbert von Chamisso, and the artist Louis Choris, Kotzebue set out on July 30, 1815 to find a passage across the Arctic Ocean and explore the less-known parts of Oceania.

Proceeding via Cape Horn, he discovered the Romanzov Islands, Rurik Islands and Krusenstern Islands (today Tikehau), then made for Kamchatka, and in the middle of July proceeded northward, coasting along the north-west coast of North America, and discovering and naming Kotzebue Sound or Gulf and Cape Krusenstern in the remote Chukchi Sea. Returning by the coast of Asia, he again sailed to the south, sojourned for three weeks at the Sandwich Islands, and on January 1, 1817 discovered New Year Island. After further cruising in the Pacific Ocean, he again proceeded north, but severe illness compelled him to return to Europe, and he reached the Neva on August 3, 1818, bringing home a large collection of previously unknown plants and much new ethnological information.

Travels of Kotzebue from 1823—1826 (In Russian).

In 1823 Kotzebue, now a captain, was entrusted with the command of an expedition in two ships of war, the main object of which was to take reinforcements to Kamchatka. There was, however, a staff of scientists on board the Russian sailing sloop "Enterprise," who collected much valuable information and material in geography, ethnography and natural history. The expedition, proceeding by Cape Horn, visited the Radak and Society Islands, and reached Petropavlovsk in July 1824. Many positions along the coast were rectified, the Navigator islands visited, and several discoveries made. The expedition returned by the Marianas, Philippines, New Caledonia and the Hawaiian Islands, reaching Kronstadt on July 10, 1826.

There are English translations of both Kotzebue's narratives: A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Bering’s Straits for the Purpose of exploring a North-East Passage, undertaken in the Years 1815-1818 (3 vols. 1821), and A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823-1826 (1830).

He died in Reval (now Tallinn) in 1846 and was buried in the Kose Parish churchyard approx. 30 km from Tallinn where his imposing monument now stands. In the last years of his life he lived in the manor of Kau (now Triigi) near Kose. Kotzebue Sound, Kotzebue Street in Northern Tallinn and the city of Kotzebue, Alaska are named after him.

See also[link]

• European and American voyages of scientific exploration

References[link]

Kotzebue's tomb in Kose churchyard

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links[link]

• Works by Otto von Kotzebue at Project Gutenberg
• Overview of Triigi (Kau) manor (owned by the von Kotzebue's) in Estonian Manors Portal
• genealogy of the family Kotzebue

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. It needs additional citations for verification. Tagged since June 2011. It may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Tagged since June 2011. It may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. Tagged since June 2011.

August von Kotzebue
Born	(1761-05-03)3 May 1761 Weimar
Died	23 March 1819(1819-03-23) (aged 57) Mannheim
Resting place	Mannheim
Occupation	Author
Language	German
Alma mater	University of Duisburg

August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (German pronunciation: [ˈaʊɡʊst fɔn ˈkɔtsəbu]; 3 May 1761 – 23 March 1819) was a German dramatist and author who also worked as a Generalkonsul in Russia.

One of Kotzebue's books was burned during the Wartburg festival in 1817. He was murdered in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a militant member of the Burschenschaften. The murder of Kotzebue gave Metternich the pretext to issue the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which dissolved the Burschenschaften, cracked down on the liberal press, and seriously restricted academic freedom in the states of the German Confederation.

Life[link]

Kotzebue was born in Weimar, to a respected merchant family, and was educated at Wilhelm-Ernst-Gymnasium in Weimar, where his uncle, the writer and critic Johann Karl August Musäus was among his teachers. In 1776, the young Kotzebue acted alongside Goethe in the latter’s play Die Geschwister, which premiered in Weimar.^[1] In 1777, aged sixteen, he enrolled in the University of Jena to study legal science. He continued his studies at Duisburg, graduating in 1780, and initially practiced as a lawyer in Weimar.

Through his association with Graf Goertz, Prussian ambassador at the Russian court, Kotzebue became secretary to the Governor General of Saint Petersburg. In 1783 he was appointed assessor to the high court of appeals in Reval, where he married the daughter of a Russian lieutenant general. He was ennobled in 1785, and became president of the Magistrat of the Governorate of Estonia, a province of the Russian Empire.

In Reval, his first literary works where favourably received. His novels Die Leiden der Ortenbergischen Familie (The Sorrows of the Ortenberg Family) (1785) and Geschichte meines Vaters (History of my Father) (1788) met with appreciation and even more so his plays Adelheid von Wulfingen (1789), Menschenhass und Reue (Misanthropy and Repentance) (1790) and Die Indianer in England (The Indians in England) (1790).

The good reputation due to these works was, however, almost destroyed by a controversial dramatic satire, Doktor Bahrdt mit der eisernen Stirn (Doctor Bahrdt with the Iron Brow), which appeared in 1790 with the name of Knigge on the title page. Written in response to a polemical feud between J.G. Zimmermann and leaders of Berlin's party of the Enlightenment, it linked each of Zimmermann's opponents to a particular sexual perversion. Kotzebue denied authorship, even when the police began to investigate the matter. This alienated both Zimmermann and Knigge (his former allies), and also gained Kotzebue a reputation for dishonesty and lasciviousness that he would never shake off.

After the death of his first wife^[when?], Kotzebue retired from the Russian service, and lived for a time in Paris and Mainz; in 1795, he settled on an estate which he had acquired near Reval and devoted himself to writing. In the space of only a few years, Kotzebue published six volumes of miscellaneous sketches and stories (Die jüngsten Kinder meiner Laune, 1793–1796) and more than twenty plays, many of which were translated into several European languages.

In 1798 he accepted the office of dramatist to the court theatre in Vienna, but owing to differences with the actors he was soon obliged to resign. He then returned to his native town, but as he was not on good terms with the powerful Goethe, and had openly attacked the romantic style for which Goethe was known, his position in Weimar was not comfortable.

In April 1800, he decided to return to Saint Petersburg, but on his journey there he was arrested at the border under suspicion of being a Jacobin and transported to Siberia. Fortunately he had written a comedy which flattered the vanity of Emperor Paul I of Russia; he was quickly brought back, presented with an estate from the crown lands of Livonia, and appointed director of the German theatre in Saint Petersburg. Kotzebue wrote about this period in his life in the autobiographical Das merkwürdigste Jahr meines Lebens (The strangest Year of my Life).

After the assassination of Tsar Paul I, Kotzebue returned to Germany in 1801. After failing to establish himself in Weimar's literary circles, he moved to Berlin where he edited Der Freimutige in collaboration with Garlieb Merkel from 1803 to 1807, and began his Almanach dramatischer Spiele (Almanac of the Dramatic Arts) in 1803, which was published posthumously in 1820.

In 1806, after Napoleon's victory in the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, Kotzebue fled to Russia, and in the safety of his estate in Estonia wrote many satirical articles against Napoleon Bonaparte, published in his journals Die Biene (The Bee) and Die Grille (The Cricket).

He started working for the department of foreign affairs in Saint Petersburg in 1816, and a year later was sent to Germany as consul general for Russia. Some suspected him of being a spy, and this view persisted for a long time, but in modern times this has been shown to have been unfounded: he reported only on matters that were already public knowledge. Nevertheless it is fair to say he was Russia's advocate in Germany.^[2]

Assassination[link]

In a weekly journal (Literarisches Wochenblatt) which he published in Weimar he scoffed at the pretensions of those Germans who demanded free institutions, and soon became detested by nationalist liberals.

One of them, Karl Ludwig Sand, a theology student, plotted to kill him, carrying out the act soon after Kotzebue had moved with his family to Mannheim.

Sand attacked Kotzebue at his house on 18 March 1819. According to Alexandre Dumas, père, Sand became overwrought when one of Kotzebue's children appeared and started to cry, and then stabbed himself.

Sand was arrested and carefully nursed back to health. At his trial, he protested that Kotzebue was an enemy of the German people.^[3] Nevertheless, he was convicted of Kotzebue's murder and was executed later that year.

The assassination of Kotzebue provided Prince Metternich with arguments to convince the Confederation to enact greater restrictions on universities and the press, called the Carlsbad Decrees.

Work[link]

Kotzebue, portrait in Weimar

Though he was unfavourably reviewed by critics - many of whom saw his work as immoral - he was one of the most popular writers of his time. In an essay called 'Why Do I Have So Many Enemies?', Kotzebue cited jealousy of his fame as a factor. He was politically conservative and cosmopolitan in his outlook, and spoke out against the antisemitism of student nationalists.

He was approached in 1812 by Beethoven, who suggested Kotzebue write the libretto for an opera about Attila (which was never written). Beethoven did however produce incidental music for two of Kotzebue's plays, The Ruins of Athens (Beethoven's opus 113) and King Stephen (opus 117).

Besides his plays, Kotzebue wrote several historical works: his 'History of the German Empires' was burned by nationalist students at the 1817 Wartburg Festival (which Sand attended).

Of continuing interest are his autobiographical writings, Meine Flucht nach Paris im Winter 1790 (1791), Über meinen Aufenthalt in Wien (1799), Das merkwürdigste Jahr meines Lebens (1801), Erinnerungen aus Paris (1804), and Erinnerungen von meiner Reise aus Liefland nach Rom und Neapel (1805).

As a dramatist he was extraordinarily prolific, his plays numbering over 200; his popularity, not merely on the German, but on the European stage, was unprecedented.

His success, however, was seen as due less to any conspicuous literary or poetic ability than to an extraordinary facility in the invention of effective situations. He possessed, as few German playwrights before or since, the unerring instinct for the theatre; and his influence on the technique of the modern drama from Scribe to Sardou and from Bauernfeld to Sudermann is unmistakable.

Kotzebue is to be seen to best advantage in his comedies, such as Der Wildfang, Die beiden Klingsberg and Die deutschen Kleinstädter, which contain admirable genre pictures of German life.

These plays held the stage in Germany long after the once famous Menschenhass und Reue (which translates as Misanthropy and Repentance, but was known in England as The Stranger), Graf Benjowsky, or ambitious exotic tragedies like Die Sonnenjungfrau and Die Spanier in Peru (which Sheridan adapted as Pizarro) were forgotten.

Theatre historians usually consider the runaway success of The Stranger, the English version of Menschenhass und Reue, in both England (where it opened in 1798) and the United States as one of the harbingers of the emerging popularity of theatrical melodrama, which dominated European and American stages for the first seventy-five years of the nineteenth century.

Two collections of Kotzebue's dramas were published during his lifetime: Schauspiele (5 vols., 1797); Neue Schauspiele (23 vols., 1798–1820). His Sämtliche dramatische Werke appeared in 44 vols., in 1827-1829, and again, under the title Theater, in 40 vols., in 1840-1841. A selection of his plays in 10 vols. appeared in Leipzig in 1867-1868. See Heinrich Doring, A. von Kotzebues Leben (1830); W. von Kotzebue, A. von Kotzebue (1881); Ch. Rabany, Kotzebue, sa vie et son temps (1893); W. Sellier, Kotzebue in England (1901).

Legacy[link]

A street in Põhja-Tallinn administrative district of Tallinn, Estonia is named after him.

Kotzebue was the father of 18 children, among them Otto von Kotzebue, Moritz von Kotzebue, Paul Demetrius Kotzebue and Alexander Kotzebue.

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: August von Kotzebue

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Kotzebue, August Friedrich Ferdinand von.

• Works by August von Kotzebue at Project Gutenberg
• Works of August von Kotzebue in German by EPOCHE NAPOLEON

Boudewijn Büch, 1994.

Boudewijn Maria Ignatius Büch (December 14, 1948^[1] – November 23, 2002) was a Dutch writer, poet and television presenter.

Early life[link]

Büch originated from a to the Catholic Church converted Jewish family. He was born in a hospital in The Hague and spent his childhood in Wassenaar.^[1] His father was a civil servant.^[1] He and Boudewijn's mother divorced in 1963.^[1] Boudewijn had five brothers,^[1] one of them Menno Büch.

Controversy[link]

Büch exhibited pseudologia fantastica, uttering many complete falsehoods about his life.^[2] Tellingly, a 2004 biography has the subtitle (translated) "Report on a mystification".

One of these lies was that he was the father of a child that had died at the age of around six. The boy he referred to did exist, but the child was not his and it did not die. This lie formed the basis of his successful novel De kleine blonde dood ("The small blond death").^[2]

Television[link]

One of Büch's most successful television programmes was De wereld van Boudewijn Büch (VARA, summer 1988 – autumn 2001), in which he travelled all around the world to show and give his views on various places, people and phenomena.^[3]

Bibliophilia[link]

Büch was a bibliophile, specializing in various subjects, including biology, Goethe and explorers. At his death, he possessed approximately 100,000 books.^[4] Furthermore he was very interested in islands, specifically islands that were hard to visit, like Bouvet Island near Antarctica. He wrote five non-fiction books on the subject of islands, commonly known in Dutch as the 'Islands series'.

Death[link]

Büch was found dead in his house on Amsterdam's Keizersgracht on November 23 2002 and believed to have died that day at circa 2pm.^[5]

Further reading[link]

• Kagie, Rudie (2004) (in Dutch). Boudewijn Büch, verslag van een mystificatie. Amsterdam: Prometheus. ISBN 978-90-446-0334-7. 

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} Kagie, Rudie (2004) (in Dutch). Boudewijn Büch, verslag van een mystificatie. Amsterdam: Prometheus. pp. 24. ISBN 978-90-446-0334-7. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Kagie, Rudie (2004) (in Dutch). Boudewijn Büch, verslag van een mystificatie. Amsterdam: Prometheus. pp. 10–21. ISBN 978-90-446-0334-7. 
3. ^ Kagie, Rudie (2004) (in Dutch). Boudewijn Büch, verslag van een mystificatie. Amsterdam: Prometheus. pp. 198,208–219. ISBN 978-90-446-0334-7. 
4. ^ Kagie, Rudie (2004) (in Dutch). Boudewijn Büch, verslag van een mystificatie. Amsterdam: Prometheus. pp. 177. ISBN 978-90-446-0334-7. 
5. ^ Kagie, Rudie (2004) (in Dutch). Boudewijn Büch, verslag van een mystificatie. Amsterdam: Prometheus. pp. 229. ISBN 978-90-446-0334-7. 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Boudewijn Büch

This article about a Dutch writer or poet is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e