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The Deerslayer: Spinoza

AUERBACH BERTHOLD AUERBACH, German novelist, was born on the 28th of February, 1812, at Nordstetten in the Wurttemberg Black Forest. His parents were Jews, and intended their son for the ministry; but after studying philosophy at Tubingen, Munich, and Heidelberg, and becoming estranged from the Jewish orthodoxy by the study of Spinoza, he devoted himself to literature. Auerbach's beginning was a most fortunate one, as he wrote a romance on the life of Spinoza (1837) "so interesting in itself, and so close in its adherence to fact," that it may be read with equal advantage as a novel or as a biography. He also translated the works of Spinoza. The author won his fame chiefly through his stories of peasant life in the Black Forest, in which he depicts the life of the South German peasant, as Albrecht Bitzius painted the peasantry of Switzerland. After writing many stories of this order, Auerbach later returned to his first phase as a novelist, and wrote "On the Heights," and other romances of a more speculative and philosophical tendency, turning upon plots invented by himself; but with the exception of "On the Heights," which has always been a great favorite, these romances were not very popular. Auerbach died at Cannes, France, on the 8th of February, 1882. A list of his works contains "Dichter und Kaufman," "Schwarzwalder Dorfgeschichten," "Barfussele," "Edelweiss," "Das Landhaus am Rhein," and a number of others.