Andreas Gryphius
born Oct. 2, 1616, Glogau, Silesia
[now Głogów, Pol.]
died July 16, 1664, Glogau
lyric poet and dramatist, one of
Germany’s leading writers in the 17th
century.
Gryphius (the family name Greif was
latinized after the fashion of the
times) was orphaned early in life, and
the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War
soon cast a shadow over his unsettled
childhood. A refugee from his native
town, he was educated in various places,
revealing himself in the process as a
brilliant scholar. Crowned poeta
laureatus by Count Georg von Schönborn,
whose sons he tutored, Gryphius went to
Leiden and stayed there six years, as
both student and teacher. After
extensive travels in Holland, France,
and Italy, he finally returned to
Silesia in 1647 and, in 1650, took up
the important administrative post of
syndic in Glogau, a post he filled until
his death.
Gryphius’ literary reputation has
increased enormously during the 20th
century. His plays are distinguished by
a deep sense of melancholy and pessimism
and are threaded through with a fervent
religious strain which, faced with the
transitoriness of earthly things and the
fight for survival in the ravaged
Germany of the time, borders on despair.
He wrote five tragedies: Leo Armenius
(1646), Catharina von Georgien, Carolus
Stuardus, and Cardenio und Celinde (all
printed 1657), and Papinianus (1659).
These plays deal with the themes of
stoicism and religious constancy unto
martyrdom, of the Christian ruler and
the Machiavellian tyrant, and of
illusion and reality, a theme that is
used with telling effect in the
middle-class background of Cardenio und
Celinde. The theme of illusion and
reality is a fundamental one in his
three comedies, the best of which are
Die geliebte Dornrose (1660; The Beloved
Hedgerose) and Herr Peter Squentz
(1663).
Gryphius’ lyric poetry covers a wide
range of verse forms and is
characterized by a technical mastery and
assurance and a portrayal of human
emotions in adversity, the sincerity and
compulsive power of which stamp him,
particularly in his sonnets, as a great
poet.
