August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue

August von Kotzebue (1761–1819) was a writer who served in the Russian civil service and wrote successful stage plays.

His assassination by the fraternity member Karl Ludwig Sand in March 1819 triggered the Carlsbad Decrees — and with them the persecution that affected Hegel’s students Asverus, Henning, and Ulrich. A second-rate playwright thus became the occasion for the century’s harshest censorship.