Heinrich Hofmann (1842-1902) had an unspectacular life, but enjoyed some spectacular successes. He rose to fame in 1869 at the age of 27 with his Parisian crime caper Cartouche; Jacques Offenbach's one-act plays were very popular in Berlin at the time. From then on, Hofmann no longer had to give piano lessons, but was able to live off the proceeds of his compositions.

With his programmatic symphony Frithjof (based on a Nordic saga), the heroic opera Armin (which ends with the victory of the Cherusci in the Teutoburg Forest), and the ingenuous musical comedy Ännchen von Tharau (in which a young theology student cadges the folk song Ännchen from the elderly lyricist Simon Dach), he created works which were frequently performed in his time, reflecting the zeitgeist of the years 1870 to 1890 following the founding of the German Empire.

But even his honourable acceptance into the Berlin Academy of Arts could not prevent his works from being performed less frequently from the 1890s on. After his death, his music fell largely into obscurity.