Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was a lawyer who wrote at night. By day, the court — cases, documents. By night, The Nutcracker, The Sandman, The Golden Pot.
He was born in Königsberg in 1776. A jurist by profession, he worked in Poland and then returned to Berlin — all the while a music critic, a conductor, a painter.
Kreisleriana gave the figure of the mad Kapellmeister, Hoffmann's alter ego. The Devil's Elixirs and Tomcat Murr are the novels. The collections Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner and Night Pieces gather the tales set on the unsteady border between the real and the fantastic.
He drank. He was ill. He worked to the end. He died in Berlin in 1822 — paralyzed for the last year of his life, dictating from his bed. Dickens and Dostoevsky read him.