ABSTRACT
Contemporary and later compatriots of Martin Opitz from Silesia could use his fame in arguing the dominance of their homeland in the literature of the Baroque. When Opitz left Heidelberg in 1620 he left behind him with his friend, the Heidelberg literatus Julius Wilhelm Zincgref, a substantial number of his poems. The deficiencies in the Poeterey are usually assumed to be some remaining technical faults, some erotic poems and at least one which attacks the invading Spanish armies. In the poetry Gellinek identifies a number of themes and motifs: vanitas, the concern for fame through poetry, the love-complaint in nature, the loss of the self or personality in love. Paul Fleming considered himself as a successor to Opitz, was held to be the 'Saxon Opitz' even during his lifetime, at least in Saxony but also further afield, and his work can be regarded as standing in the same Humanist tradition of Latin and German poetry as that of Opitz.
