Herr, welch Heil kann ich erringen

Author: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock

Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, the eldest of the 17 children of Gottlob Heinrich Klopstock (then advocate and commissionsrath at Quedlinburg, and after 1735 amtmann at Friedeburg, on the Saale, near Halle), was born at Quedlinburg, July 2, 1724. From 1739 to 1745 he attended the famous school at Schulpforte, near Naumburg (where he conceived the first idea of his Messias); then he entered the University of Jena, in the autumn of 1745, as a student of theology, and the University of Leipzig at Easter, 1746. At Leipzig he made acquaintance with J. A. Cramer (q.v.); and became one of the contributors to the Bremer Beiträge, in which the first three books of his Messias appeared. In 1748 he became tutor in the house of a merchant named Weiss a… Go to person page >