Gottsched

Gottsched, JOHANN CHRISTOPH, an important figure in the history of German literature, was born at Judithenkirch, near Königsberg, in Prussia, February 2, 1700. At the university of Königsberg he studied philosophy, belles-lettres, and languages. In 1724 he removed to Leipzig, where in 1730 he became professor of Philosophy and Poetry, and in 1734 professor of Logic and Metaphysics. He died 12th December 1766. Between 1729 and 1740 Gottsched exercised a sort of Johnsonian dictatorship in the world of polite literature in Germany. At first he laid down, in various periodicals which he edited, rules and theories for the composition of poetry, and sharply criticised the bombastic absurdities of the Silesian school of poets. At the same time he laboured, to the best of his abilities, to improve his mother-tongue as a literary vehicle, by aiming at greater polish, formal completeness, and elegance. But his chief endeavours were directed to the reformation of the German drama, a work in which, in co-operation with the Neubers, he did indeed effect a very meritorious alteration, in that he raised the moral tone, the literary workmanship, and the taste of the acting plays, banished the coarse buffooneries of Hanswurst ('Jack Pudding') from the boards, and recommended as models the best class of French theatrical pieces. But his reforming zeal carried him too far, and brought him on to the dangerous ground of excess. He became pedantic and vain; his critical faculty became distorted; he manifested a petty jealousy of all literary authority save his own, opposing himself to the Swiss writers Bodmer and Breitinger, and refusing to see any merit in Klopstock and Lessing. His own model drama, The Dying Cato (1732), notwithstanding its immense success, is sadly barren of poetry and dramatic action. He did, however, leave one useful work, Nöthiger Vorrath zur Geschichte der Deutschen dramatischen Dichtkunst (1757-65), an unfinished catalogue of plays from 1450 to 1760. See Danzel, Gottsched und seine Zeit (1848); and Bernays, Goethe und Gottsched, zwei Biographien (1880).