5. Adding stones to the edifices

Fig. 8 [Karl Gottlieb Hofmann], Pantheon der Deutschen, 3 parts (Chemnitz: Karl Gottlieb Hofmann, 1794–1800), part 2 (1795), frontispiece and title page. Despite disavowals in its country of origin, there is such a thing as a great German biographical tradition. Why, then, do we not hear more of it, and what has happened meanwhile to the art of biography in the German-speaking lands? Inevitably, comparisons are made with the Anglo-Saxon tradition of biographical writing and scholarship. Thes.