Mundt, Klara Müller (1814–1873)

German novelist. Name variations: (pseudonym) Luise or Louise Mühlbach. Born Klara Müller in Neubrandenburg, Germany, on January 2, 1814; died in Berlin on September 26, 1873; married Theodore Mundt (1808–1861, a novelist and critic), in 1839.

In 1839, Klara Müller married author Theodore Mundt, a teacher at the University of Berlin and then a professor of general history and literature in Breslau. That same year, under the pseudonym Luise Mühlback, Klara Müller Mundt published her first novel. The long series of historical romances which followed earned her a large audience and a large fortune, enabling her to support her husband during the lengthy illness which preceded his death, and to build a handsome residence in Berlin, where she was a prominent figure in literary society. Her salon brought Fanny Lewald , among others, to the attention of high society.

Mundt, an advocate of women's suffrage and changes in the social position of women, was a frequent participant in reform movements and wrote many essays on social questions. Her stories have been translated into English, and were well known in Great Britain and America. The most important of these are her historical novels, including Aphra Behn (3 vols., 1849), Frederick the Great and his Court, Joseph II and His Court, Henry VIII andCatharine Parr, Louisa of Prussia and Her Times, Marie Antoinette and her Son, The EmpressJosephine , and The Thirty Years' War. In all, Mundt wrote more than 50 novels, some multivolume, comprising nearly 100 volumes.