The New International Encyclopædia/Zschokke, Heinrich

ZSCHOKKE, chṓk'e, Heinrich (1771-1848). A German-Swiss novelist and miscellaneous writer, born in Magdeburg. Zschokke ran away from school at seventeen, and was for a time a strolling playwright. He studied afterwards in the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, where he became privat-docent, and wrote his novel Abällino (1794), which was successfully dramatized. Then he traveled for a time and kept a boarding-school at Reichenau, in Switzerland, of which country he presently became a patriotic citizen. In 1798 he removed to Aarau, where he filled with energy and sound judgment several public and diplomatic offices. Besides editing several popular periodicals, Zschokke published the lucid and rationalistic religious manual, Stunden der Andacht (1806, twice translated, 1843 and 1862), and several popular studies in Bavarian and Swiss history, of which Des Schweizerlandes Geschichten (1822) was translated in 1855. Zschokke wrote also many novels and tales, from which three selections have been translated (Philadelphia, 1845; New York, 1848; London, 1848). His Works have been collected in 35 volumes (1854). He published an autobiographical Selbstschau (1842, trans. 1847). There are Lives by Emil Zschokke (3d ed., Berlin, 1876); and Born (Basel, 1885). Consult also Keller, Beiträge zur politischen Thätigkeit Zschokkes (Aarau, 1887); and Wernly, Vater Heinrich Zschokke (ib., 1894).