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Science under Leibnitz also began to take shape in this century, while Opitz wrote operas in imitation of the Italian style; and translations from the Italian Marini came into vogue. In the eighteenth century arose the Saxonic and Swiss schools of literature, neither of which was devoted to national works.
The Seventeenth Century: Opitz, Leibnitz, Puffendorf, Kepler, Wolf, Thomasius, Gerhard; Silesian Schools; Hoffmannswaldau, Lohenstein. The Swiss and Saxon Schools: Gottsched, Bodmer, Rabener, Gellert, Kaestner, and others. 2. Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland, and Herder. 3. Goethe and Schiller. 4. The Goettingen School: Voss, Stolberg, Claudius, Buerger, and others. 5.
Opitz wrote some operas in imitation of the Italian, and Gryphius acquired popularity by his translations from Marini and his introduction of the pastoral drama. The theatrical productions of Lohenstein, characterized by pedantry and bad taste, together with the multitude of others belonging to this age, are curious instances of the folly and degradation to which the stage may be reduced.
This was Opitz, a poet who deserves even yet to be read with attention, but who is no more worthy to be classed as the Dryden, whom his too partial countrymen have styled him, than the Germany of the Thirty Years' War of taking rank by the side of civilized and cultured England during the Cromwellian era, or Klopstock of sitting on the same throne with Milton.
A stranger has no vote on such a question; but after repeated perusal of the works of Opitz my feelings justified the verdict, and I seemed to have acquired from them a sort of tact for what is genuine in the style of later writers. Of the splendid aera, which commenced with Gellert, Klopstock, Ramler, Lessing, and their compeers, I need not speak.
This first school was succeeded by a second of surpassing extravagance. Hoffman von Hoffmannswaldau, A.D. 1679, the founder of the second Silesian school, was a caricature of Opitz, Lohenstein of Gryphius, Besser of Flemming, Talander and Ziegler of Zesen, and even Francisci was outdone by that most intolerable of romancers, Happel.
But it would be difficult to find in all their writings one single thought or expression that had not been used before; although the works of Opitz and of his followers were marked by a servile imitation of French and Dutch poets, they exerted an influence on the literary taste of their country, enriched the German language with new words and phrases, and established the rules of prosody.
[Footnote 34: Perry (Thomas Sargeant) “From Opitz to Lessing.” Boston, 1885, p.
At length, about the year 1620, Opitz arose, whose genius more nearly resembled that of Dryden than any other poet, who at present occurs to my recollection. In the opinion of Lessing, the most acute of critics, and of Adelung, the first of Lexicographers, Opitz, and the Silesian poets, his followers, not only restored the language, but still remain the models of pure diction.
Martin Opitz, A.D. 1639, the founder of the first Silesian school, notwithstanding the insipidity of the taste of the day, preserved the harmony of the German ballad.
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