Not a single man on earth knows from his own experience the how and where of his birth, only from tradition, which is often very uncertain.

T. That same day Hoffmann was surprised to meet Hippel whom he had not seen for nine years. Hoffmann's breakthrough came in 1809 with the publication of Ritter Gluck a story about a man who meets or believes he has met the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87) more than twenty years after the latter's death.

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822) better known by his pen name E. Hoffmann's stories were very influential during the 19th century and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement. He is the subject and hero of Jacques Offenbach's famous but fictional opera The Tales of Hoffmann and the author of the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King on which the famous ballet The Nutcracker is based.