FOUQU, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH KARL DE LA MOTTE, BARON

born Feb. 12, 1777, Brandenburg died Jan. 23, 1843, Berlin German novelist and playwright remembered chiefly as the author of the popular fairy tale Undine (1811). A descendant of French aristocrats, Fouqu in his writings expressed heroic ideals of chivalry designed to arouse a sense of German tradition and national character in his contemporaries during the Napoleonic era. His ideas, based on the view of linguistic development first conceived by the philosopher J.G. Fichte, stressed the influence of the mother tongue in shaping the mind. A prolific writer, Fouqu gathered much of his material from Scandinavian sagas and myths. His dramatic trilogy, Der Held des Nordens (180810; Hero of the North), is the first modern dramatic treatment of the Nibelung story and a precedent for the later dramas of Friedrich Hebbel and the operas of Richard Wagner. His most lasting success, however, has been the story of Undine, a water sprite who marries the knight Hildebrand to acquire a soul and thus become human but who later loses this love to the treacheries of her uncle Kuhleborn and the lady Berthulda. Although Fouqu's works were at first enthusiastically received, after 1820 they rapidly passed out of fashion. Fouqu died in poverty after belated recognition by Frederick William IV.