Nutcracker and the Mouse King

Diótörö és Egérkirály / át E.T.A. Hoffmann. - Budapest: Europa Könyvkiadó, [1977]. - 318 p.; 54x35 mm. - ISBN 9630712334



Brown cloth binding. Dark brown print and label with title on the spine. Original edition 1958 Aufbau-Verlag Berlin. Translated in Hungarian by György Sárközy; illustrated by István Engel Tevan. 5000 copies.

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (Nussknacker und Mausekönig); a story written in 1816 by E. T. A. Hoffmann in which young Marie Stahlbaum's favorite Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive and, after defeating the evil Mouse King in a battle, whisks her away to a magical kingdom, populated by dolls. Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (1776-1822), better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann (he changed his third forename in Amadeus in homage to the great composer Mozart), was a German writer, composer, caricaturist and jurist. After his study at the university of Köningsberg he had a very unsettled career, moving from town to town. In 1794 he gave music lessons to a married woman named Dora Hatt. She was ten years older but he became very enamored of her. She gave birth to her sixth child in 1795. By an arrangement between the two families he got a position elsewhere. In 1816 Hoffmann attained a high position in the Supreme Court in Berlin but still he could not make a choice between his role as a bureaucrat and as an artist. He died in 1822 as a result of nervous exhaustion and excessive drinking. He is the (fictional) subject and hero of the famous opera 'The Tales of Hoffmann' by Jac. Offenbach. His most familiar story is the novelette in this miniature book which inspired Tchaikovsky's ballet 'The Nutcracker' (1892).