Franzos, Karl-Emil

Franzos, Karl-Emil, b 25 October 1848 in Chortkiv, Galicia, d 28 January 1904 in Berlin. Austrian writer and literary scholar. From 1858 Franzos lived in Chernivtsi. He studied in Vienna and Graz. In 1877 he settled in Vienna and edited Neue illustrierte Zeitung and the journal Deutsche Dichtung. In 1886 he moved to Berlin. Franzos wrote poetry, short stories, and novels dealing with the life of Ukrainian peasants. His novel Ein Kampf um Recht (1882) depicts the hard life of the Hutsuls in the 19th century and their struggle against social injustice. In ‘Die Kleinrussen und ihre Süanger’(1877) and other articles, which were eventually collected in his book Vom Don zur Donau (1878), Franzos gave a very positive evaluation of Taras Shevchenko’s poetry and claimed for the first time that the poet’s talent was of world stature. In ‘Die Literatur der Kleinrussen’ (Vom Don zur Donau, 2nd edn, 1889), Franzos presented a general survey of Ukrainian literature from the 11th century to the 1880s, clearly distinguishing the Ukrainians from the Russians.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]