Grillparzer, Franz (1791–1872)

Austrian poet and dramatist. His plays include the tragedy Die Ahnfrau/The Ancestress (1817), the classical Sappho (1818), and the trilogy Das goldene Vliess/The Golden Fleece (1821). His two greatest dramas are Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen/The Waves of Sea and Love (1831) and Der Traum, ein Leben/A Dream is Life (1834).

Grillparzer, born in Vienna, worked for the Austrian government service 1813–56. His historical tragedies König Ottokars Glück und Ende/King Ottocar, His Rise and Fall (1825) and Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn/A True Servant of His Master (1826) both involved him with the censor. With Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen, a dramatization of the story of Hero and Leander, he returned to the Hellenic world. Der Traum, ein Leben, his technical masterpiece, was the first of his dramas without a tragic ending. He wrote a bitter cycle of poems Tristia ex Ponto (1835) after an unhappy love affair.