Gustav Freytag was a noted author, journalist, and cultural historian whose works are a useful source of cultural and historical information about the second half of the nineteenth century. His novel Soll und Haben (1855; translated as Debit and Credit, 1855) remained a best-seller long into the twentieth century, and his multivolume cultural history Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit (Pictures from the German Past, 1859-1867; excerpts translated as Pictures of German Life, 1862-1863) remains a treasure trove of historical fact and anecdote. In both his writings and his life, Freytag was a typical representative of the bourgeois liberal nationalism in German lands after the unsuccessful revolutionary upheavals of 1848. He was a political moderate and a strong advocate of a Germany unified under Prussian leadership and excluding Austria. This agenda was realized in 1871 with the founding of the German Empire.

Freytag was born on 13 July 1816 in Kreuzburg, Silesia, to Gottlob Ferdinand...