In the merchant halls of old Danzig, a young man's awakening to art and love leads him into the orbit of a strange old painter and a beauty who may be more than she seems.
First published in 1816 and later placed in The Serapion Brethren, Arthur's Hall (Der Artushof) follows Traugott as he abandons the counting-house for the calling of the brush, pursuing the enigmatic Berklinger and his daughter across Europe. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776 – 1822), jurist, composer, and a founding voice of German Romanticism, returns here to his beloved theme of the artist torn between the everyday and the ideal.