Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock - Biography

Biography

Klopstock was born at Quedlinburg, the eldest son of a lawyer. Both in his birthplace and on the estate of Friedeburg on the Saale, which his father later rented, he spent a happy childhood; and more attention having been given to his physical than to his mental development, he grew up strong and healthy and became an excellent horseman. In his thirteenth year, he returned to Quedlinburg and attended the Gymnasium there, and in 1739 went on to the famous classical school named Schulpforta. Here he soon became an adept in Greek and Latin versification, and wrote some meritorious idylls and odes in German. His original intention of making Henry the Fowler the hero of an epic was, under the influence of Milton's Paradise Lost with which he became acquainted through Bodmer's translation, abandoned in favor of a religious epic.

While still at school, he had already drafted the plan of Der Messias on which most of his fame rests. On 21 September 1745 he delivered, on quitting school, a remarkable "departing oration" on epic poetry — Abschiedsrede über die epische Poesie, kultur- und literargeschichtlich erläutert — and next proceeded to Jena as a student of theology, where he elaborated the first three cantos of the Messias in prose. Having found life at this university uncongenial, he transferred in the spring of 1746 to Leipzig, where he joined the circle of young men of letters who contributed to the Bremer Beiträge. In this periodical the first three cantos of Der Messias in hexameter verse were anonymously published, in 1748.

A new era in German literature had commenced, and the identity of the author soon became known. In Leipzig he also wrote a number of odes, the best known of which is An meine Freunde (1747), afterwards recast as Wingolf (1767). He left the university in 1748 and became a private tutor in the family of a relative at Langensalza, where unrequited love for a cousin (the "Fanny" of his odes) disturbed his peace of mind. For that reason he gladly accepted in 1750 an invitation from Bodmer, the translator of Paradise Lost, to visit him in Zürich, where Klopstock was initally treated with every kindness and respect and rapidly recovered his spirits. Bodmer, however, was disappointed to find in the young poet of the Messias a man of strong worldly interests, and a coolness sprang up between the two friends.

At this juncture Klopstock received from Frederick V of Denmark, on the recommendation of his minister Count von Bernstorff (1712–1772), an invitation to settle in Copenhagen with an annuity of 400 thalers in the hope that he would complete Der Messias there. The offer was accepted.

On his way to the Danish capital, Klopstock met in Hamburg the woman who in 1754 became his wife, Margareta (Meta) Möller, the “Cidli” of his odes. She was the daughter of a Hamburg merchant and an enthusiastic admirer of his poetry. His happiness was short; she died in 1758, leaving him almost broken-hearted. His grief at her loss finds pathetic expression in the fifteenth canto of the Messias.

The poet subsequently published his wife's writings, Hinterlassene Werke von Margareta Klopstock (1759), which give evidence of a tender, sensitive and deeply religious spirit. See also Memoirs of Frederick and Margaret Klopstock (English translation by Elizabeth Smith, London, 1808) and her correspondence with Samuel Richardson, published 1818.

Klopstock now relapsed into melancholy; new ideas failed him, and his poetry became more and more vague and unintelligible. He continued to live and work in Copenhagen, however, and next, following Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg, turned his attention to northern mythology, which he conceived should replace classical subjects in a new school of German poetry. In 1770, when King Christian VII dismissed Count Bernstorff from office, he retired with the latter to Hamburg but retained his pension together with the rank of councillor of legation.

Here, in 1773, he issued the last five cantos of the Messias. In the following year he published his strange scheme for the regeneration of German letters, Die Gelehrtenrepublik (1774). In 1775 he travelled south, and making the acquaintance of Goethe on the way, spent a year at the court of the margrave of Baden at Karlsruhe. Thence, in 1776, with the title of Hofrath and a pension from the margrave, which he retained along with that from the king of Denmark, he returned to Hamburg where he spent the remainder of his life. His latter years he passed, as had always been his inclination, in retirement, only occasionally relieved by socializing with his most intimate friends, occupied in philological studies and taking scant interest the in new developments in German literature. The American War of Independence and the French Revolution aroused him to enthusiasm, however. The French Republic sent him a diploma of honorary citizenship; but, horrified at the terrible scenes the Revolution had enacted in the name of liberty, he returned it. At sixty-seven he undertook his second marriage, to Johanna Elisabeth von Winthem, a widow and a niece of his late wife, who for many years had been one of his most intimate friends. He died in Hamburg on 14 March 1803, mourned by all Germany, and was buried with great pomp and ceremony next to his first wife in the churchyard of the village of Ottensen.