GOTTSCHED, JOHANN CHRISTOPH (1700-1766)

This article appears in Volume V12, Page 280 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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GOTTSCHED, JOHANN CHRISTOPH (1700-1766) , German author and critic, was born on the 2nd of February 1700, at Judithenkirch near Konigsberg, the son of a Lutheran clergyman. He studied philosophy and history at the university of his native town, but immediately on taking the degree of Magister in 1723, fled to

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

in order to evade impressment in the Prussian military service. Here he enjoyed the protection of J. B. Mencke (1674-1732), who, under the name of " Philander von der Linde," was a well-known poet and also president of the Deutschiibende poetische Gesellschaft in

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

. Of this society Qottsched was elected " Senior" in 1726, and in the next year reorganized it under the title of the Deutsche Gesellschaft. In 1730 he was appointed extraordinary professor of poetry, and, in 1734,

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

professor of logic and metaphysics in the university. He died at Leipzig on the 12th of December 1766.

Gottsched

GOTTSCHED, JOHANN CHRISTOPH (1700-1766)

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

work

WORK

was his Versuch einer kritischen Dichtkunst fur die Deutschen (1730), the first systematic treatise in German on the art of poetry from the standpoint of Boileau. His Ausfiihrliche Redekunst (1728) and his Grundlegung einer
deutschen Sprachkunst (1748) were of importance for the development of German style and the purification of the language. He wrote several plays, of which Der sterbende Cato (1732), an adaptation of

Addison

ADDISON, JOSEPH (1672-1719)

's tragedy and a French play on the same theme, was long popular on the stage. In his Deutsche Schaubuhne (6 vols., 1740-1745), which contained mainly translations from the French, he provided the German stage with a classical repertory, and his bibliography of the German drama, Notiger Vorrat zur Geschichte der deutschen dramatischen Dichtkunst (17571765), is still valuable. He was also the editor of several journals devoted to literary criticism. As a critic,

Gottsched

GOTTSCHED, JOHANN CHRISTOPH (1700-1766)

insisted on German literature being subordinated to the laws of French classicism; he enunciated rules by which the playwright must be bound, and abolished bombast and buffoonery from the serious stage. While such reforms obviously afforded a healthy corrective to the extravagance and want of

taste

TASTE (from Lat. taxare, to touch sharply; tangere, to touch)

which were rampant in the German literature of the time, Gottsched went too far. In 1740 he came into conflict with the Swiss writers Johann Jakob Bodmer (q.v.) and Johann Jakob Breitinger (17011776), who, under the influence of

Addison

ADDISON, JOSEPH (1672-1719)

and contemporary Italian critics, demanded that the poetic imagination should not be hampered by artificial rules; they pointed to the

great

GREAT

English poets, and especially to Milton. Gottsched, although not blind to the beauties of the English writers, clung the more tenaciously to his principle that poetry must be the product of rules, and, in the fierce controversy which for a time raged between Leipzig and Zurich, he was inevitably defeated. His influence speedily declined, and before his death his name became proverbial for pedantic folly.
His wife, Luise Adelgunde Victorie,'nee Kulmus (17131762), in some respects her husband's intellectual superior, was an author of some reputation. She wrote several popular comedies, of which Das Testament is the best, and translated the Spectator (9 vols., 1739-1743),

Pope

's Rape of the Lock (1744) and other English and French works. After her death her husband edited her Samtliche kleinere Gedichte with a memoir (1763).
See T. W. Danzel, Gottsched and seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1848) ; J. Crt1er, Gottsched, Bodmer, and Breitinger (with selections from their writings) (

Stuttgart

STUTTGART

, 1884) ; F. Servaes, Die Poetik Gottscheds and der Schweizer (Strassburg, 1887) ; E. Wolff, Gottscheds Stellung im deutschen Bildungsleben (2 vols., Kiel, 1895-1897), and G. Waniek, Gottsched and die deutsche Literatur seiner Zeit (Leipzig, 1897). On Frau Gottsched, see P. Schlenther, Frau Gottsched and die biirgerliche Komodie (Berlin, 1886).

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