Johann August Apel


Johann August Apel was a German writer and jurist. Apel was born and died in Leipzig.

Influence

"Der Freischütz" was Apel's version of the Freischütz folktale, and it was published as the first story of the first volume of his and Friedrich Laun's Gespensterbuch horror anthology. Friedrich Kind and Carl Maria von Weber drew on this version as the main source for the story of their opera Der Freischütz. On recommendation of Carl von Brühl they abandoned their working title Die Jägerbraut to the better known title of Apel's tale.
Two of his other short stories: "Die Bilder der Ahnen" and "Die schwarze Kammer" were included in Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès' Fantasmagoriana, which was read by Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John William Polidori and Claire Clairmont at the Villa Diodati in Cologny, Switzerland during the Year Without a Summer, inspiring them to write their own ghost stories, including "The Vampyre", and Frankenstein, which went on to shape the Gothic horror genre. "Die Bilder der Ahnen" especially influenced Mary Shelley, who described it in her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein:

Works

Plays

Polyïdos Die Aitolier Kalliroe
  • ''Kunz von Kaufungen''

Short story collections

Cicaden Gespensterbuch with Friedrich LaunWunderbuch volumes 1–2 with Friedrich Laun
  • ''Zeitlosen''

Non-fiction

Librettos