Bürger, Gottfried August

Bürger, Gottfried August (gôt`frēt ou`gst bür`gər), 1747–94, German poet. He is best known for his ballads in folk-song style; the famous Lenore (1773) was widely translated and had far-reaching influence. Bürger edited and wrote for the Göttingen Musenalmanach and taught aesthetics at the Univ. of Göttingen. He translated many works of Homer, Shakespeare, and others, as well as the famous stories of Baron Münchausen. His unconventional approach to poetry was severely criticized by Schiller.

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Bürger, Gottfried August

(born Dec. 31, 1747, Molmerswende bei Halberstadt, Brandenburg—died June 8, 1794, Göttingen, Hanover) German poet. He was associated with the Göttinger Hain, a circle of Sturm und Drang poets who reawakened interest in folk and nature themes. His bizarre ballad “Lenore” (1773) had a profound effect on the subsequent development of literary Romanticism throughout Europe, and he is remembered as a founder of German Romantic ballad literature. He is also noted for his Petrarchan sonnets and translations from English, especially Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

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Bürger, Gottfried August 

Born Dec. 31, 1747, in Molmerswende; died June 8, 1794, in Göttingen. German poet. Son of a pastor. Received a legal education.

Bürger was one of the spokesmen for the ideas of Sturm und Drang. Using folklore traditions, he created the genre of the serious ballad, which was new to German literature (Lenore, 1773, Russian translation by V. A. Zhukovskii and free translation by P. A. Katenin entitled Ol’ga; The Wild Hunter, 1786; and others). Burger’s hostility to the feudal system was manifested strikingly in his poem The Peasant to His Most Illustrious Tyrant (1773), in epigrams (The Nobleman and the Peasant, The Coat of Arms), and in the satirical episodes of a novel about Münchhausen (1786, a reworking of the book by R. E. Raspe). A supporter of the Great French Revolution, Bürger denounced the reactionary coalition of the European monarchs and called upon the German people to refuse to participate in the war.

WORKS

Werke und Briefe. A selection published by W. Friedrich. Leipzig [1958].
In Russian translation:
[Stikhotvoreniia.] In Nemetskie poety v biografiiakh i obraztsakh. Edited by N. V. Gerbel’. St. Petersburg, 1877. Pages 112-25.
Udivitel’nye prikliucheniia barona Miunkhgauzena. Moscow, 1956.

REFERENCE

Reiman, Reiman, P. Osnovnye techeniia v nemetskoi literature 1750-1848. Moscow, 1959. Pages 178-84, 196-97.