In Le Colonel Chabert, Honoré de Balzac wrote a highly emotional and deeply disturbing novel, about the Napoleonic Colonel Chabert who has supposedly come back from the dead and wants to take up his life again after having been missing for many years. Waltershausen, as accomplished as a composer as he was as a writer, recognised the dramatic qualities of this material and wrote his own libretto, one of the most important contributions to musical realism in Germany. His music reached his public immediately, and Waltershausen was a successful composer over night.