Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse
Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse (February 16, 1746 – June 22, 1803) was a German writer. He was born in Langewiesen, then part of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen (now in Thuringia). After grammar school in Schleusingen, he studied law at Jena and Erfurt. In Erfurt he met the writer Wieland and, through him, the poet Gleim, who in 1772 gave him a job as a tutor in a Quedlinburg family.
In 1774 Heinse moved to Düsseldorf to help edit the periodical Iris with J. G. Jacobi. The famous art gallery there inspired him to study art seriously, and Jacobi funded a three-year stay in Italy (1780–1783). He returned to Düsseldorf in 1784. In 1786 he was named a reader to the elector Frederick Charles Joseph, archbishop of Mainz, and later became his librarian at Aschaffenburg, where he died.
Heinse’s most famous work is Ardinghello und die glückseligen Inseln (1787), a novel set in 16th-century Italy that also expresses his views on art and life. He also wrote Laidion, oder die eleusinischen Geheimnisse (1774) and Hildegard von Hohenthal (1796). His writing and art criticism helped shape the romantic movement in Germany.
His complete works were published in ten volumes by Heinrich Laube (Leipzig, 1838), and later in a 13-volume edition edited by Carl Schüddekopf (Leipzig, 1903–1925).
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:36 (CET).