“ But ill-health and constitutional shyness caused him to give up a musical career, and he turned exclusively to literary studies, and wrote several stories and dramas. Of the latter, Der Erbförster (1850) attracted immediate attention as a masterly psychological study. ”

“ LUDWIG, OTTO (1813–1865) , German dramatist, novelist and critic, was born at Eisfeld in Thuringia, on the 11th of February 1813. His father, who was syndic of Eisfeld, died when the boy was twelve years old, and he was brought up amidst uncongenial conditions. He had devoted his leisure to poetry and music, which unfitted him for the mercantile career planned for him. The attention of the duke of Meiningen was directed to one of his musical compositions, an opera, Die Köhlerin, and Ludwig was enabled in 1839 to continue his musical studies under Mendelssohn in Leipzig. ”