Andreas Gryphius

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.1: German-language Writing and Culture: Germany, 500-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

Born 11 Oct 1616
Died 16 Jul 1664
Activity 1636-1664

Places

Born in Germany
Active in Germany

Activities

Primary

Playwright / Dramatist
Poet

Resources

Gryphius' Works

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Gryphius was Germany’s greatest Baroque poet and dramatist, giving a powerful voice to the suffering and misery of the Thirty Years’ War that ravaged the country between 1618 and 1648 as a result of the bitter split between Catholics and Protestants since Martin Luther’s Reformation started in 1517. Gryphius was also a proponent of modern sciences and the humanities.

Gryphius was born on 2 October 1616, the same year Shakespeare died and two years before the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, to the fifty-six-year old Lutheran archdeacon of Glogau in Silesia, Paul Gryphius (Greif), and his third wife Anna, thirty-two years his junior. Glogau, though in the reign of the Catholic Emperor, was a center of Lutheran activities in which Paul was certainly involved. He died on 5 January

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2364 words

Citation: Classen, Albrecht. "Andreas Gryphius". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 September 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5448, accessed 21 November 2024.]