E.T.A. Hoffmann

The central writer of the uncanny in German Romanticism – the figure who most fully explores the instability of perception, identity, and reality itself. Born in Königsberg in 1776, he trained in law and worked as a jurist, while simultaneously pursuing careers as a composer, critic, and writer. He died in 1822, leaving behind a body of work that would shape not only Romanticism but the later development of psychological fiction.