[pseudonym of Oskar Meding]. German novelist, born on the 11th of April 1829, at Königsberg, being the son of the governor of East Prussia. He studied law in his native town, at Heidelberg and Berlin, from 1848 to 1851, when he became an advocate at Marienwerder. At a later period he was employed in the magistracy and administration, and in 1859 he quitted the public service of Prussia and joined that of Hanover, in which he rose to the position of councilor of state. Sent on a mission to the Elector of Hesse in 1866, he returned to Hanover at the time of the Prussian invasion of that country, rejoined the king, who was with the army, and after the catastrophe of Langensalza followed the king to Vienna. He went to Paris in the following year as the representative of the interests of the deposed king. In 1870 he gave his adhesion to the Prussian government, and after residing two years in Switzerland and at Stuttgart he settled in Berlin, where, keeping wholly aloof from politics, he began to write his personal reminiscences in the form of novels, under the famous pseudonym. Of these may be mentioned Um Zepter und Kronen (1872–76); Die Römerfahrt der Epigonen (1873); Höhen und Tiefen (1879–80); Saxoborussen (1885); Gipfel und Abgrund (1888); and Der Weisse Adler (1891). Under his own name he published Memoiren zur Zeitgeschichte (1881) and a biography of William I of Germany, with corrections and additions by the Emperor.
