Author · Germany
Jean Paul
Died in 1825
Johann Paul Friedrich Richter was born in 1763 in Wunsiedel, in Franconia, the son of a schoolmaster and organist who became a pastor, whose death, shortly after his entry into the lycée at Hof, plunged the family into poverty. A theology student at Leipzig with no taste for that path, he had to flee his creditors in 1784 and afterwards lived by private tutoring near Hof. He took the name Jean Paul out of admiration for Rousseau; the success of his novels made him famous from 1795. He died in 1825 in Bayreuth, where he had settled.