HITZIG, JULIUS EDUARD

HITZIG, JULIUS EDUARD (1780–1849), German author, publisher, and criminologist; member of the prominent Itzig family of Berlin and Potsdam, grandson of Daniel *Itzig (1723–1799). His original name was Isaac Elias Itzig, but in 1799 he converted and changed his name to Hitzig – which prompted Heine to satirize him as "H. Itzig." Hitzig studied law, and between 1799 and 1807 served as a Prussian official in Warsaw and Berlin. During his Berlin period, he was a member of the romantic group known as the Nordsternbund, and published poems in the group's Musenalmanach of 1804. In 1808 he founded a publishing house which, among others, published Heinrich von Kleist's Berliner Abendblaetter. In 1814, after the defeat of Napoleon, he resumed his law career in the service of the Prussian government. In 1824 he founded the Literarische Mittwochsgesellschaft, which became a center for the later Romantics and for aspiring young writers. Hitzig wrote biographies of two romantic writers he had come to know in Warsaw, Zacharias Werner (1823) and E.T.A. Hoffmann (1823), and the definitive biography of his lifelong friend, Adalbert von Chamisso (1839), the creator of Peter Schlemihl. He himself was best remembered after his death for Der neue Pitaval (1842–47, and frequently reprinted), a collection in many volumes of crime and detective stories of all lands and ages, in which he collaborated with W. Haering. His son was the German architect Friedrich *Hitzig (1811–1881).

add. bibliography:

N. Dorsch, Julius Eduard Hitzig. Literarisches Patriarchat und buergerliche Karriere. Eine dokumentarische Biographie zwischen Literatur, Buchhandel und Gericht der Jahre 1780–1815 (1994).

[Sol Liptzin]