Gottfried August Bürger (redirected from G. A. Bürger)

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.