Martin Opitz

620 Besprechungen

Veronika Marschall / Robert Seidel (Hrsg.) Martin Opitz. Lateinische Werke. Berlin: De Gruyter 2009–2015. 3 Bde. isbn: 978-3-11-018631-4 (vol. 1); 978-3-11-023792-4 (vol. 2); 978-3-11-037110-9 (vol. 3).

Celebrated as “Vater der deutschen Dichtung,” Martin Opitz (1597–1639) has al- ways figured prominently in scholarship on German literature. Students are, of course, familiar with his programmatic Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey (1624), with its cogent prescriptions for German prosody as well as concise descrip- tions of conventional literary genres, as the decisive turning point for German literature. Moreover, as specialists in the early modern period often empha- size, an equal, if not greater, contribution came from Opitz’s composition of German-language poems as models for the literary style he advocated. His plan for stimulating creation of a “new” German literature was to recreate what other European cultures had already achieved: he wrote German equivalents for the humanist poetry of Dutch, Italian, and, above all, French poets (see, for example, 1:78–79), a feat accomplished with the publication of Teutsche Poemata in 1624, which was revised, expanded, and reissued as Acht Bücher Deutscher Poematum in 1625.1 On the other hand, Opitz’s extraordinary corpus of Latin writings has been much less celebrated—indeed, it has been seriously neglected over the centu- ries. This oversight will certainly come to an end with the appearance of the book under review—a definitive critical edition of his complete Latin writings, equipped with German translations and extensive commentaries. This collection demonstrates not only Opitz’s literary fluency—he especially en- joyed writing Latin verse extemporaneously—but also the prolific output of important Latin works throughout his career, with equal intensity before and after his breakthrough publications advocating German-language literature in the mid-1620s.

1 Opitz’s friend Julius Wilhelm Zincgref published the Teutsche Poemata in Strasbourg in 1624 on the basis of a manuscript Opitz had entrusted to him in 1620 in Heidelberg; Zincgref ap- pended several poems Opitz had published in the meantime as well as several by other poets, including Georg Rudolph Weckherlin. The 1624 appearance of this work compelled Opitz to revise his collection substantially, with deletions and additions, for the 1625 publication of Acht Bücher Deutscher Poematum in Breslau; he also rearranged the poems and divided the volume into eight books based mostly on poetic genre and theme. For an account of Opitz’s dissatisfaction with Zincgref’s edition, see George Schulz-Behrend, Hrsg., Martin Opitz. Gesammelte Werke. Kritische Ausgabe. 4 vols. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1968–1990, vol. 2/1, pp. 164–167.

Besprechungen 621

Altogether, he wrote over 200 works in Latin, on a wide range of topics and in many styles, from the whimsicality of Renaissance eroticism to the solemnity of funereal poetry and oratory. Currently, his only well-known Latin publication is Aristarchus, sive de contemptu linguae teutonicae (1617), itself a preliminary manifesto for the reform of German-language literature. Similarly, the few scholars to study other Latin works have often sought ways to illuminate his German writings. For example, the Latin works offer much insight into his neo- stoicism and his reception of Dutch humanist writers (Daniel Heinsius, Hugo Grotius, and Janus Gruter). Nonetheless, the Latin corpus is above all an extensive record of Opitz’s deep involvement in the politics of his time. As Klaus Garber put it, “Der Begründer der neueren deutschen Kunstdichtung war in erster Linie Politiker und Diplomat, in zweiter Gelehrter und Kulturorganisa- tor, erst in dritter Dichter.”2 In accord with this, Opitz’s Latin works offer important perspectives for the study of political culture in Germany, for they record constant reflection on political disasters (and aspirations) during the Thirty Years War. One of the leitmotifs of his oeuvre, taken as a whole, is “patria,” with many elegiac and philosophical musings on the cultural-political demise of the “fatherland”—“cum patria nobis patria esse desiit” (“seit das Vaterland aufgehört hat, uns ein Vaterland zu sein”; 2:86–87)—along with Opitz’s fervid hopes for stabilization and recovery. Close to the epicenter of important devel- opments in the war, Opitz wrote extensively on events and people in the Palati- nate, Silesia, Transylvania (Siebenbürgen), and Poland. At the outset of the war, he composed several works in support of the “Winter King,” Friedrich v of the Palatinate, King of Bohemia, most importantly his Oratio ad Fridericum Regem Bohemiae (1:200–221). Of particular interest are his many subsequent works created during his association with Karl Hannibal von Dohna, as President of the Imperial Chamber perhaps the most powerful figure in Silesia, and with the Danzig court of King Władysław iv Vasa of Poland. Although von Dohna and King Władysław were re-catholicizing their territories, Opitz’s works often articulate support for the survival of Protestant culture in these hard-pressed regions. Another distinctive element of Opitz’s Latin oeuvre is the presence of many tributes to powerful aristocratic and noble women, including such figures as Anna Vasa, Princess of Sweden and Poland, whom he celebrated in an extensive memorial in part for her adherence to Protestantism (3:150–175). The edition is a collaborative work undertaken by over thirty experts in early modern literature, including such distinguished scholars and philologists as Wilhelm Kühlmann, Walter Ludwig, Lothar Mundt, Fidel Rädle, and Robert

2 Klaus Garber: Martin Opitz. In: Killy Literatur-Lexikon. 13 Bde. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1988– 1993), vol. 8 (1990), p. 504.

daphnis 46 (2018) 607-627