The New International Encyclopædia/Langbein, August Friedrich Ernst

LANGBEIN, läng'bḯn, August Friedrich Ernst (1757-1835). A German humorous poet and novelist, born at Radeberg, near Dresden. He studied law at Leipzig, practiced it afterwards in Dresden, and from 1800 on lived in Berlin, devoted entirely to literary pursuits. In 1820 he was appointed censor of belletristic literature. Extremely proficient in metrical composition, and commanding an inexhaustible fund of drollery, he cultivated with especial success the comical poetic tale, frequently inclining toward frivolity, but teeming with fun. The widespread popularity of his Schwänke (1792, 21st ed. 1888) was almost equaled by that of his merry tales in prose, such as Thomas Kellerwurm (1806), Magister Zimpels Brautfahrt, and others, distinguished for inventive faculty and pleasing diction. He published himself the original edition of his Sämmtliche Schriften (1835-37); his Humoristische Gedichte were edited by Tittmann (Halle, 1872), and Humoristische Erzählungen appeared in Leipzig, 1891. Consult Jess, Langbein und seine Verserzählungen (Berlin, 1902).