Ludwig Tieck

Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, and critic, who was part of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Tieck's importance lay in the readiness with which he adapted himself to the new ideas which arose at the close of the 18th century, rather than in any conspicuous originality. His importance in German poetry is restricted to his early period. In later years it was as the helpful friend and adviser of others, or as the well-read critic of wide sympathies, that Tieck distinguished himself.

Tieck remained influential as dramatic adviser to the theatre at Dresden, and as an editor of Hans Sachs, Martin Opitz, Andreas Gryphius, and Daniel Casper von Lohenstein and of Heinrich von Kleist and Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz.

Tieck also influenced Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser. It was from Phantasus that Wagner based the idea of Tannhäuser going to see the pope and Elisabeth dying in the song battle.