August von Kotzebue (born May 3, 1761,Weimar, Saxony [Germany]—died March 23, 1819,Mannheim, Baden) was a German playwright widely influential in popularizing poeticdrama, into which heinstilled melodramatic sensationalism and sentimental philosophizing.

Kotzebue’s firstcomedy, written while he was a law student at Jena, gave him entrée into court literary circles in Weimar, but in 1781 he was forced to go into exile for a reason that is not clear. Entering government service in Russia (1783), he became president of the magistracy of the province of Estonia in 1785 and was ennobled. Some of his greatest successes—Adelheid von Wulfingen (1788),Menschenhass und Reue (1789–90;The Stranger),Die Indianer in England (1790;The Indian Exiles)—were written while he lived there. HisSpanier in Peru (1796) was adapted by the English playwrightRichard Brinsley Sheridan asPizarro (1799) and also proved a great success. Kotzebue traveled abroad and spent some time writing for the municipal theatre ofVienna. Upon his return to Russia he was arrested, inexplicably, andexiled toSiberia. The emperorPaul I, just as capriciously as he had exiled Kotzebue, had him released a few months later. Kotzebue was given an estate inLivonia and made director of the German theatre inSt. Petersburg.

In 1801 he returned to Weimar, but he was not on good terms withJohann Wolfgang von Goethe or with the Romantics; he went back to Russia in 1806. In 1817 he was again sent abroad by the emperor Alexander to report on current Western ideas in politics, finance, and education. Execrated by political radicals as a spy in the pay of a reactionary power, Kotzebue was assassinated byKarl Sand, a member of a radical student association. The assassin was executed and the universities placed under strict control as a result.

As a dramatist Kotzebue wasprolific (he wrote more than 200 plays) andfacile, but dramaticallyadroit. He is at his best in such comedies asDer Wildfang (1798; “The Trapping of Game”) andDie deutschen Kleinstädter (1803; “The German Small-towner”), which contain admirable pictures of provincial German life. He also wrote some novels as well as historical and autobiographical works.