Christian Heinrich Spiess
Christian Heinrich Spiess (April 4, 1755 – August 17, 1799) was a German writer who started with romance and later wrote horror stories. He was born in Freiberg, Saxony, and spent some time as an actor. In 1788 he became the manager on the estate of Count Caspar Hermann von Künigl at Besdiekau in Bohemia, where he died on August 17, 1799, in a troubled mental state due to his strange fancies.
Spiess helped create a popular German style of storytelling called the Schauerroman, or “shocker,” which features knights, robbers, and ghosts from the dark ages. He borrowed ideas from Goethe and Schiller and is considered the founder of this genre, which was later developed by Carl Gottlob Cramer and Christian August Vulpius. His vivid, sensational tales appealed to a wide audience and made him one of the most read writers of his time.
His most famous work is the ghost story Das Petermännchen (1793), which influenced later writers such as Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. In the tale, a knight is urged by an evil dwarf-ghost to commit terrible crimes, and is finally torn apart by the Devil. Other Schauerroman stories include Der alte Überall und Nirgends (1792); Die Löwenritter (1794); and Hans Heiling (1798).
Besides these, Spiess wrote many comedies and, like Schiller, a tragedy Maria Stuart (1784), which was performed at the Vienna court theatre that same year.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:42 (CET).