Moritz August von Thümmel (1738–1817) was a German humorist and satirical author.

Thümmel was born on 27 May 1738 at Schönefeld

Leipzig-Schönefeld

Schönefeld is a city quarter in the Northeast of Leipzig. Concerning administrative matters Schönefeld-Ost is a district of Leipzig, while the rest of Schönefeld, together with Abtnaundorf forms a district called Schönefeld-Abtnaundorf.- History :...

 near Leipzig. Educated at Roßleben

Roßleben

Roßleben is a town in the Kyffhäuserkreis district, in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated on the river Unstrut, 22 km southeast of Sangerhausen....

, Thuringia

Thuringia

The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

, and the University of Leipzig

University of Leipzig

The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...

, where he studied law, he held from 1761 until 1783 various offices in the ducal court of Saxe-Coburg

Saxe-Coburg

Saxe-Coburg was a duchy held by the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty in today's Bavaria, Germany.After the Division of Erfurt in 1572, Coburg was part of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Eisenach, ruled by the Ernestine duke John Casimir jointly with his brother John Ernest. In 1596...

, where he became privy councillor and minister of state.

He wrote a comic prose epic, Wilhelmine, oder der vermählte Pedant (1764); and Die Inoculation der Liebe (1771), a tale in verse. His most famous work is his Reise in die mittäglichen Provinzen van Frankreich im Jahre 1785–1786 (1791–1805), a "sentimental journey" in ten volumes, in which the influence of Wieland

Christoph Martin Wieland

Christoph Martin Wieland was a German poet and writer.- Biography :He was born at Oberholzheim , which then belonged to the Free Imperial City of Biberach an der Riss in the south-east of the modern-day state of Baden-Württemberg...

 is unmistakable. Schiller

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

, who found this work wanting in aesthetic dignity, yet allowed that the keen knowledge of men and things it displays makes it a valuable contribution to literature. Thümmel's other writings are not as well known.

His collected works were published in Leipzig in eight volumes (1811–1839), with a biography by Johann E. von Gruner in volume 8 (1820), and again in 1856. See also Felix Bobertag, Erzählende Prosa der klassischen Periode, vol. i. (Joseph Kürschner's Deutsche Nationaltiteratur, vol. cxxxvi, 1886). Wilhelmine has also been edited by Richard Rosenbaum (1894), and has been translated into English by John Raymond Russell (1998).

Thümmel retired in 1783 and died in Coburg

Coburg

Coburg is a town located on the Itz River in Bavaria, Germany. Its 2005 population was 42,015. Long one of the Thuringian states of the Wettin line, it joined with Bavaria by popular vote in 1920...

on 26 October 1817.

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