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Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was born in 1776 with the name Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann in Königsberg, East Prussia. (Königsberg is now the city of Kaliningrad in Russia.) Hoffmann’s parents separated when he was a small child, and he was mostly brought up by an aunt and uncle. His relatives included several people who were musically talented, and Hoffmann himself would eventually pursue a career in music. Trained in law, Hoffmann worked in that field for several years before he began composing music and publishing stories while also maintaining his day job. He composed ballets and operas, even changing his middle name to “Amadeus” in a sign of admiration for the famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Regarded as one of the foremost authors of the German Romantic movement, Hoffmann routinely explored subjects such as fairy tales, secrets, ghost stories, mirror images, doppelgängers, and the blurring of lines between fantasy and reality. While he wrote poetry, novels, and stories, he may be best known for his story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” which was the basis for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker. “The Sandman” was adapted into a ballet titled Coppélia (1870). However, the story was changed significantly, with the more frightening and gruesome elements removed and a happy ending added. The story was also one of three Hoffmann stories used in Jacques Offenbach’s 1881 opera The Tales of Hoffmann. In that adaptation, Hoffmann himself takes the place of Nathaniel, falling in love with Olympia.

Hoffmann’s health greatly declined in the latter years of his life. As his body failed him, Hoffmann dictated his final works. He died in Berlin at the age of 46 in 1822.

Next section Critical Context: Psychoanalytical Interpretations of “The Sandman”

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