1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kurz, Hermann

KURZ, HERMANN (1813–1873), German poet and novelist, was born at Reutlingen on the 30th of November 1813. Having studied at the theological seminary at Maulbronn and at the university of Tübingen, he was for a time assistant pastor at Ehningen. He then entered upon a literary career, and in 1863 was appointed university librarian at Tübingen, where he died on the 10th of October 1873. Kurz is less known to fame by his poems, Gedichte (1836) and Dichtungen (1839), than by his historical novels, Schillers Heimatjahre (1843, 3rd ed., 1899) and Der Sonnenwirt (1854, 2nd ed., 1862), and his excellent translations from English, Italian and Spanish. He also published a successful modern German version of Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan und Isolde (1844). His collected works were published in ten volumes (Stuttgart, 1874), also in twelve volumes (Leipzig, 1904).

His daughter, Isolde Kurz, born on the 21st of December 1853 at Stuttgart, takes a high place among contemporary lyric poets in Germany with her Gedichte (Stuttgart, 1888, 3rd ed. 1898) and Neue Gedichte (1903). Her short stories, Florentiner Novellen (1890, 2nd ed. 1893), Phantasien und Märchen (1890), Italienische Erzählungen (1895) and Von Dazumal (1900) are distinguished by a fine sense of form and clear-cut style.