Nutcracker and mouse king

Ernst Theodor Amate Hoffmann (1776-1822) - German writer, the largest representative of romanticism, as well as composer and conductor, artist, lawyer.
Hoffmann was born in the Prussian city of Königsberg, in the family of a royal lawyer. From an early age he showed a tendency to music and drawing, at the age of 14 he became a student of an organist. However, the parents had other views on the future of Ernst, and at the age of 16, during family traditions, he enters the university at the Faculty of Law, which successfully graduates.
But working in court, Hoffman continues to be an writer in music and literature, at times he receives the position of conductor, the director of the theater, the decorator artist, one of his Zingshpiles is put in the theater. Alas, all attempts to earn a living only in art lead to failures. Hoffmann has to lead a double life: he serves as an official, giving all his free time to creativity. For 46 years, the great romantic wrote many short stories and three novels, as well as two operas, ballet, sonatas for piano, etc. - in honor of Mozart adored by him, he even changed one of his names Vilgelm on Amadeus.
The vivid feature of Hoffmann poetics is that he does not share the phantasmagoria and everyday life, his images, according to the critic of Vl. Solovyov, "are not ghosts from another, alien world, but as the other side of the same reality.
Hoffmann wrote a lot of unusual terrible fairy tales: "Golden Pot", "Sand Man", "Baby Tsahes, nicknamed Zinnobert, but" The Nutcracker and Mouse King "occupies a special place even after 200 years. It was first published in the Berlin collection of fairy tales for children in 1816, just at Christmas, then became part of the anthology of the Serapion brothers"