GOITER, FRIEDRICH WILHELM Ger man poet and dramatist, was born on Sept. 3, 1746, at Gotha. After the completion of his university career at Gottingen, he was appointed second director of the Archive of his native town, and subsequently went to Wetzlar, the seat of the imperial law courts, as secretary to the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha legation. In 1768 he re turned to Gotha as tutor to two young noblemen, and here, together with H. C. Boie, he founded the famous Gottinger Musenalmanach. In 177o he was once more in Wetzlar, where he belonged to Goethe's circle of acquaintances. Four years later he settled in Gotha, where he died on March 18, 1797. Gotter was the chief representative of French taste in the German literary life of his time. His own poetry is elegant and polished, and in great measure free from the trivialities of the Anacreontic lyric of the earlier generation of imitators of French literature ; but he was lacking in imaginative depth. His plays were mostly based on French originals.
Gotter's collected Gedichte appeared in 2 vols. in 1787 and 1788; a third volume (1802) contains his Literarischer Nachlass. See B. Litzmann, Schroder and Gotter (1887), and R. Schlosser, F. W. Gotter, sein Leben and seine Werke (1894) •