Johann Diederich Gries

Johann Diederich Gries (7 February 1775, Hamburg – 9 February 1842, Hamburg) was a German poet and socialite during the Romantic period. His extensive list of friends and acquaintances included Goethe and Schiller. Viewed through the prism of intervening years, his most enduring contribution is as a translator.

Life Johann Diederich Gries was born into a prosperous Hamburg family, the fourth of his parents' seven recorded sons. Franz Lorenz Gries (1731-1803), his father, was a merchant and city senator. His mother Johanna also came from a mercantile background.

In April 1799, after seven or eight terms, a faced serious warnings from his father about his perceived failure to engage seriously in his legal studies, and was obliged, with a heavy heart, to leave Jena. He completed his degree in Göttingen and obtained his doctorate of laws in 1800, his doctoral dissertation being entitled "De litt. cambialium acceptione". In Hamburg a serious family meeting about the future now took place. Two of his brothers were already qualified and working as Hamburg lawyers while a third was a Hamburg Syndic. There seems to have been an acceptance on the part of their father that his fourth son, Diederich, was destined for a literary future rather than a life in the law. returning to his beloved Jena every few years. He based himself with Johann Heinrich Voss in Heidelberg between 1806 and 1808, during which time his circle included Clemens Brentano, Josephvon Eichendorff and Wolf von Baudissin. Between 1824 and 1827 he lived in Stuttgart, where friends included Gustav Schwab and Ludwig Uhland.

During the early 1830s he was affected deeply by the deaths of various friends, including, in 1832, Goethe himself. In April 1831 Gries was laid low by gout, an inherited family affliction. This affected his grip so that he was no longer able to play card games or write without some difficulty. Meanwhile, sources speculate that he had, by this stage, probably exhausted his inherited wealth. Relatives in Hamburg became concerned and repeatedly urged him not to return to live there. However, in 1837 his youngest brother, Franz and his energetic wife took him into their Hamburg home, where Diederich was able to complete his translation of "Bojardos Verliebter Roland".

His death in February 1842 came after several years of debilitating illness, but he was spared from the traumatic experience of the great fire which destroyed much of Hamburg three months later.

Evaluation During his lifetime Gries certainly published several of his own poems, but they never really rose above a certain level of mediocrity. He himself was conscious of his limited talent in this respect, and insisted that he would "rather provide good translations than mediocre originals". As a translator he excelled, providing German language readers with artistically primed translations that were true to the original texts of well known foreign language texts, which remain of value two centuries later.

Works Torquato Tassos Befreites Jerusalem, 1800–1803 Ariosts Rasender Roland, 1804–1808; newly reworked edition: Lodovico Ariosto's Rasender Roland, 5 volumes, Jena 1827–1828 Calderon's Plays, 1815–1826 Bojardos Verliebter Roland, 1835–1837