Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener (September 17, 1714 - March 22, 1771), was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 writer of prose satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

s. He was born at Wachau

Wachau

The Wachau is an Austrian valley with a picturesque landscape formed by the Danube river. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations of Lower Austria, located midway between the towns of Melk and Krems that also attracts "connoisseurs and epicureans". It is in length and was already...

 near Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, and died at Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

.

In 1741 he made his debut as satirist in Schwabe's Belustigungen des Verstandes und Witzes, and was subsequently a contributor to the Bremer Beitrage. Rabener's satires are mainly levelled at the follies of the middle classes.

The papers which he published in the Bremer Beitrage were subsequently collected in a Sammlung satirischer Schriften (2 vols., 1751), to which two volumes were added in 1755.

Rabener is especially notorious for his parodic dissertation, Hinkmars von Repkow Noten Ohne Text, which levels a snide charge against the futility and bankruptcy of the practice of footnoting, by consisting entirely of footnotes itself. Rabener cavalierly claimed that since footnotes and endnotes seemed to have become the key to winning lasting authorial fame, he had accordingly composed his dissertation entirely in notes, and left it to others to produce the text he had annotated proleptically.

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Short biography