Martin Opitz

Martin Opitz von Boberfeld (23 December 1597 – 20 August 1639) was a German-language poet active in Poland.

Biography

Opitz was born in Bunzlau (Bolesławiec) in Lower Silesia, in the Principality of Schweidnitz-Jauer, the son of a prosperous citizen. He received his early education at the gymnasium of his native town, of which his uncle was rector, and in 1617 attended the high school—"Schönaichianum"—at Beuthen an der Oder (Bytom Odrzański), where he made a special study of French, Dutch and Italian poetry. In 1618 he entered the University of Frankfurt-on-Oder as a student of literae humaniores, and in the same year published his first essay, Aristarchus, sive De contemptu linguae Teutonicae, which presented the German language as suitable for poetry.

In 1619 Opitz went to Heidelberg, where he became the leader of the school of young poets which at that time made that university town remarkable. Visiting Leiden in the following year he sat at the feet of the famous Dutch lyric poet Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655), whose Lobgesang Jesu Christi and Lobgesang Bacchi he had already translated into alexandrines. At the invitation of Gabriel Bethlen, the lord of Transylvania, he spent a year (1622) as professor of philosophy at the gymnasium of Weißenburg (Alba Iulia). After this he led a wandering life in the service of various territorial nobles.

Besides numerous translations, Opitz edited (1639) Das Annolied, a Middle High German poem of the end of the 11th century, and thus preserved it from oblivion since the original manuscript is now lost. Opitz also wrote a pastoral novel, Schäferei der Nymphe Hercinie (The Idyll of the Nymph Hercinie, 1630).

Opitz died in Danzig on 20 August 1639.