wig's fame as a
writer rests entirely on the two dramas, the _Hereditary Forester_ and
_The Maccabaeans_, and on the two long novel-like stories, the
_Heiterethei_ and _Between Heaven and Earth_. They represent practically
everything that he ever published during his lifetime. The few
insignificant lyrics, the additional dramas and stories, partly
completed and partly fragmentary, which have become known after his
death, have added no new traits to the picture of Ludwig as it will
remain in the history of German literature, and they can well be omitted
from consideration in this brief appreciation. It must be admitted that
it is a rare phenomenon to see lasting fame and influence built on such
a slender amount of work and on so brief a period of productivity. But
within this limited range Ludwig must be recognized as a writer of
unusual powers of observation and sympathy, of imagination and embodying
execution. Truthful to himself and to the ideals of his art,
uninfluenced by the popular demands of the day or by any desire for gain
or fame, free from everything that smacks of sham or artifice, he
succeeded in creating works that speak to us with the robustness and
authority of life itself and yet are ennobled by the graces of a
selective and restraining art.

In his _Hereditary Forester_ Ludwig produced one of the best
middle-class tragedies of modern literature, combining in it, as indeed
he had set out to do, highest literary merit with impelling
effectiveness upon the stage. "It is exceedingly easy," he said, "to
write a poetic drama if one does not care to keep an eye upon the stage,
or one that is a successful stage play, but without poetry. * * * I
shall do what I can to help create that really healthy condition of the
drama which consists in the intimate union of poetry and the stage."
Following in the footsteps of Schiller in his _Intrigue and Love_ and of
Hebbel in his _Maria Magdalena_, he has not attained, it is true, the
massive solidity of the latter, nor has he breathed into his drama that
lofty spirit of social challenge that wings the former. On close
inspection, the construction of Ludwig's drama shows undeniable flaws of
motivation. The playwright has allowed too free a play to chance and
slender probability. The spirit of the revolutionary unrest of 1848 is
in the background, especially in the tavern scene of the third act, but
it does not in any way organically connect the family tragedy which we
wi