Heinrich Theodor Rötscher (20 September 1803 – 9 April 1871) 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...

 theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 critic and theorist.

Biography

Rötscher was born in Mittenwalde

Mittenwalde

Mittenwalde is a town in the Dahme-Spreewald district, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated 30 km southeast of Berlin ....

, and studied philology

Philology

Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

 and philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 at the University of Berlin

Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

. From 1828 he was a gymnasium

Gymnasium (school)

A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 teacher in Bromberg (modern-day Bydgoszcz, Poland). In 1842 he moved back to Berlin and dedicated himself to writing and theorizing about theatre. In Berlin, he was the dramatic critic for the Spenersche Zeitung.

Selected works

• Aristophanes und sein Zeitalter, an attempt to understand the ancient Greek comedian Aristophanes
  Aristophanes
  Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
  
   in light of Hegel
  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
  
  's philosophy (1827)
• Abhandlungen zur Philosophie der Kunst, also strongly tinged with Hegelianism (1837–47)
• Die Kunst der dramatischen Darstellung, his principal work: an attempt to treat theatre criticism in a scientific manner (1841–46; 2nd ed. 1864)
• Das Schauspielwesen (1843)
• Über Byrons Manfred (1844)
• Seydelmanns Leben und Wirken (1845)
• Shakespeare in seinen höchsten Charaktergebilden (1864)
• Dramaturgische und ästhetische Abhandlungen (1864, 1867)
• Dramaturgische Blätter (1865)
• Entwickelung dramatischer Charaktere aus Lessings, Schillers und Goethes Werken (1869)

External links

• Aristophanes und sein Zeitalter at Google Books