Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg

Biography

Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg was a German poet and critic.

Gerstenberg was born in Tondern, Schleswig. After attending school in Husum and at the Christianeum Hamburg, and studying law at the University of Jena, he entered the Danish military service and took part in the Russian campaign of 1762. He spent the next twelve years in Copenhagen, where he was intimate with Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. From 1775 to 1783 he represented Denmark's interests as Danish Resident at Lübeck, and in 1786 received a judicial appointment at Altona, where he died in November 1823.

In the course of his long life Gerstenberg passed through many phases of his nation's literature. He began as an imitator of the Anacreontic school (Tändeleyen, 1759); then wrote, in imitation of Gleim, Kriegslieder eines dänischen Grenadiers (1762); with his Gedicht eines Skalden (1766) he joined the group of bards led by Klopstock. He translated Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy (1767), and helped to usher in the Sturm und Drang period with a gruesome but powerful tragedy, Ugolino (1768). But he did perhaps even better service to the new literary movement with his Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Litteratur (1766-1770), in which the critical principles of the Sturm und Drang, and especially its enthusiasm for Shakespeare, were first definitely formulated. In later life Gerstenberg lost touch with literature, and occupied himself mainly with Kant's philosophy.

His Vermischte Schriften appeared in 3 vols. (1815). The Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Litteratur were republished with an introduction by Alexander von Weilen (1888). ..