Theodor Storm

Hans Theodor Woldsen Storm commonly known as Theodor Storm, was a German writer. He is considered to be one of the most important figures of German realism.

Storm was one of the most important authors of 19th-century German Literary realism. He wrote a number of stories, poems and novellas. His two best-known works are the novellas Immensee (1849) and Der Schimmelreiter ("The Rider on the White Horse"), first published in April 1888 in the Deutsche Rundschau. Other published works include a volume of his poems (1852), the novella Pole Poppenspäler (1874) and the novella Aquis submersus (1877).

Storm was born in the small town of Husum, on the west coast of Schleswig, then a formally independent duchy ruled by the king of Denmark. His parents were the lawyer Johann Casimir Storm (1790–1874) and Lucie Storm, née Woldsen (1797–1879).

Storm attended school in Husum and Lübeck and studied law in Kiel and Berlin. While still a law student in Kiel he published a first volume of verse together with the brothers Tycho and Theodor Mommsen (1843).

Storm was involved in the 1848 revolutions and sympathized with the liberal goals of a united Germany under a constitutional monarchy in which every class could participate in the political process. From 1843 until his admission was revoked by Danish authorities in 1852, he worked as a lawyer in his home town of Husum. In 1853 Storm moved to Potsdam, moving on to Heiligenstadt in Thuringia in 1856. He returned to Husum in 1865 after Schleswig had come under Prussian rule and became a district magistrate ("Landvogt"). In 1880 Storm moved to Hademarschen, where he spent the last years of his life writing, and died of cancer at the age of 70.

Storm was married twice, first to Konstanze Esmarch, who died in 1864, and then to Dorothea Jensen.