But the Ronsard or Hooft of German poetry was Martin Opitz (1597-1639). Born in Silesia, educated Optiz. in Breslau, and in the Universities of Frankfurt and Heidelberg—the cradle of the Renaissance movement,—Opitz led a wandering life. He visited Holland, and imbibed the critical doctrines of Heinsius, two of whose Dutch poems—hymns to Bacchus (1614) and Christ (1616)—he translated into German in 1622. In Paris, he met Hugo Grotius; in Denmark, he wrote his Trostgedicht in Widerwärtigkeit des Krieges; at Vienna, the emperor laureated and ennobled him. Though a zealous Protestant he was for a time in the service of Graf Hannibal von Dohna, the Catholic persecutor of Silesia. After his death (1633), Opitz entered the service of Ladislaus of Poland, where he died in 1639.
Opitz set himself deliberately to introduce new forms and an improved metre into German poetry—
"Ich will die Pierinnen,
Die nie nach teutscher Art noch haben reden können,
Sampt ihrem Helicon mit dieser meiner hand
Versetzen biss hieher in unser Vaterland."
With him began, says Goedeke a little bitterly, "the dependence of German literature, which has continued ever since, now on Dutchmen, Italians, and Spaniards; then on Frenchmen and gallicised Englishmen; then on Romans, Greeks, and Englishmen; thereafter on the Middle Ages; the East and the extreme West; and lastly, on an eclectic selection from the world's literature."
Following in the wake of the Pleiad, and drawing
