Max Ring
Max Ring was a German physician, novelist, poet, and dramatist.
Biography
Max Ring was born in the town of Zauditz, Austrian Empire, the son of a farmer.
He attended the Jewish community school in Gleiwitz and showed literary talents, writing his first poem at the age of 8. He began studying medicine at the University of Breslau in 1836. To complete his medical studies, in 1838 he travelled to Berlin with his childhood friend Ludwig Traube. It was there where he met young intellectuals such as Moritz Carrière, Karl Grün and Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim and made his debut as an author in 1839 with a volume of poems that he edited together with his friend Moritz Fränkel.
Graduating as in 1840, he began practicing medicine at Gleiwitz where he experienced the hardship and social conflicts in the countryside. He worked as a physician during the outbreak of the typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia and described the suffering he witnessed in a socially critical paper on the causes and course of the epidemic. This text underwent censorship. During the revolution in 1848, Ring took part in the political movement as a staunch democrat and was attacked with an anti-Semitic pamphlet by his opposition.
In 1849, Ring published his first novel, Berlin and Breslau, about the revolution. In 1850 he moved to Berlin, where he quickly made contact with literary circles. He befriended Theodor Mundt, Karl Gutzkow, and Theodor Mügge, and became a close family friend and doctor of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense. In 1856 he married Elvira Heymann, daughter of the publisher Karl Heymann, and in 1862 discontinued his medical practise in order to devote himself to literature exclusively. He seldom left Berlin and made only a few long trips to Austria, Switzerland and Northern Italy. In 1890 the King of Prussia awarded him the title of honorary professor. He died in Berlin.
Ring achieved his first success as a dramatist in the comedy "Unsere Freunde," and his second, in the drama "Ein Deutsches Königshaus." He became a very active contributor to Die Gartenlaube and, from 1863 to 1865 when the publication was prohibited in Prussia, he created a similar, spin-off publication in Berlin under the title Der Volksgarten.
Heinrich von Kleist's grave inscription
Heinrich von Kleist was a German poet, who died with his lover Henriette Vogel in a suicide pact. Because of the nature of their deaths, Kleist and Vogel were denied church burial and were instead interred where they died and the gravesite fell into disrepair for most of the nineteenth century. It was freshened up when Kleist became admired by late-century nationalists and was commemorated with a large stonehead for the 1936 Olympic Games. A poem of Ring's was inscribed on the tomb. In 1941, Georg Minde-Pouet, a Nazi Kleist scholar and librarian, informed Germany's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels that the quatrain on the tomb was written by a Jew, and Ring's words were removed.
Works
Gedichte. Leipzig, 1839 De Typho Abdominali, Berlin 1840 Revolution. Breslau, 1848. Berlin und Breslau. 1847–1849. Roman. 2 Bde., Breslau, 1849Die Genfer. Trauerspiel in 5 Akten. Breslau, 1850Die Kinder Gottes. Roman. 3 Bde. Breslau, 1851Der große Kurfürst und der Schöppenmeister. Historischer Roman aus Preußens Vergangenheit. 3 Bde. Breslau, 1852Stadtgeschichten. 4 Bde. Berlin, 1852Aus dem Tagebuches eines Berliner Arztes. Berlin, 1856Hinter den Coulissen. Humoristische Skizzen aus der Theaterwelt. Berlin, 1857John Milton und seine Zeit. Historischer Roman. Frankfurt a. M., 1857Rosenkreuzer und Illuminaten. Historischer Roman aus dem 18. Jahrhundert. 4 Bde. Berlin, 1861Vaterländische Geschichten. 2 Bde Berlin, 1862Neue Stadtgeschichten. 2 Bde. Berlin, 1865Ein verlorenes Geschlecht. 6 Bde. Berlin, 1867Lorbeer und Cypresse. Literaturbilder. Berlin, 1869 Götzen und Götter. Roman. 4 Bde. Berlin, 1870In der Schweiz. Reisebilder und Novellen. 2 Bde. Leipzig, 1870Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Berlin, 1870Carl Sand und seine Freunde. Roman aus der Zeit der alten Burschenschaft. 4 Bde. Berlin, 1873David Kalisch, der Vater des Kladderadatsch und Begründer der Berliner Lokalposse. Berlin, 1873Der Kleinstädter in Berlin. 2 Bde. Berlin, 1873Unfehlbar. Zeitroman. 4 Bde. Jena, 1874Der große Krach. Roman. 4 Bde. Jena, 1875Neue Stadtgeschichten. 3 Bde. Leipzig, 1876Das Haus Hillel. Historischer Roman aus der Zeit der Zerstörung Jerusalems. 3 Bde. Berlin, 1879Die Frauenverschwörung, zweiaktige Operette, Musik von Gustav Hinrichs, unter Hernahme des Stoffs des Lustspiels von Arthur Müller Die Verschwörung der Frauen oder Die Preußen in Berlin von 1858, 1886Berliner Leben. Kulturstudien und Sittenbilder. Leipzig, 1882Berliner Kinder. Roman. 3 Bde. Berlin, 1883Die deutsche Kaiserstadt Berlin und ihre Umgebung. 2 Bde. Leipzig, 1883–1884Die Spiritisten. Erzählung. Berlin, 1885Erinnerungen. 2 Bde. Berlin, 1898