ABSTRACT
Whereas the Hamburg poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1680–1747) appears to some a precursor of the Enlightenment, we see in him the first major literary figure of that movement and of the eighteenth century. If, as has often been asserted, the beginnings of modernity lie in the eighteenth century, Brockes was more modern than Johann Günther. 1 Even though he was fifteen years older than Günther, he removed himself more from the previous Baroque era sensibility. Brockes, who except for his student days spent his entire life in or near his native Hamburg, began his literary career around 1708, or probably somewhat earlier, writing a few original pieces in French and Italian, but mainly translating poems from these languages into German. 2 The philosopher Thomasius had been his teacher in Halle (1700–1702) at a time when Thomasius was leaning strongly towards Pietism, a fact which may have decisively shaped Brockes’s development. The young student also took the usual, more or less required, ‘educational tour’ of Europe (Italy, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands), and obtained a law degree in 1704 at the University of Leyden before embarking on a career as poet and civil servant. His government service included positions as senator in Hamburg (1720), ambassador to Vienna and Copenhagen, magistrate of the small town of Ritzebüttel on the Elbe river, and even what we would now term superintendent of schools in that town. Basically, however, he devoted himself to literary matters.