Paul Heyse

Born 15 March 1830, Heyse moved through Berlin's Tunnel über der Spree and Munich's Die Krokodile, two literary societies that shaped German letters in his century. Across eight decades he produced an avalanche of work: novels, verse, short fiction, plays. The volume and range made him a dominant figure among German writers, and in 1910 the Nobel Prize arrived "as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism" in his long career. One Nobel judge declared Germany hadn't seen a greater literary genius since Goethe. Heyse died 2 April 1914, the fifth oldest literature laureate on…