GOTTSCHED, JOHANN CHRISTOPH German author and critic, was born on Feb. 2, at Judithen kirch near Konigsberg, the son of a Lutheran clergyman. He studied at Konigsberg, and in 1723, on taking his degree, fled to Leipzig in order to evade Prussian military service. In 1730 he was appointed extraordinary professor of poetry, and, in ordinary professor of logic and metaphysics in the university. He died at Leipzig on Dec. 12, 1766.
Gottsched's chief work was his Versuch einer kritischen Dicht kunst fur die Deutschen (173o), the first systematic treatise in German on the art of poetry from the standpoint of Boileau. His Aus f uhrliche Redekunst (17 28) and his Grundlegung einer deutschen Sprachkunst (1748) were of importance for the devel opment of German style and the purification of the language. He wrote several plays, including Der sterbende Cato (1732), an adaptation of Addison's tragedy. In his Deutsche Schaubiihne ( 6 vols., 1740-45), which contained mainly translations from the French, he provided the German stage with a classical repertory, and prepared a bibliography of the German drama, Notiger Vorrat zur Geschichte der deutschen dramatischen Dichtkunst (1757-65) . He was also the editor of several literary journals. As a critic, Gottsched insisted on German literature being subordinated to the laws of French classicism. In 1740 he came into conflict with the Swiss writers Johann Jakob Bodmer (q.v.) and Johann Jakob Breitinger (1701-76), who, under the influence of Addison and contemporary Italian critics, demanded that the poetic imagination should not be hampered by artificial rules ; they pointed to the great English poets, and especially to Milton. Gottsched clung the more tenaciously to his pseudo-classicism, and, in the fierce controversy which for a time raged between Leipzig and Zurich, he was inevitably defeated.
His wife, Luise Adelgunde Victorie, née Kulmus (1713-62), wrote several popular comedies, of which Das Testament is the best, and translated the Spectator (9 vols., 1739-43), Pope's Rape of the Lock (1744) and other English and French works. After her death her husband edited her Sdmtliche kleinere Gedichte. See T. W. Danzel, Gottsched and seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1848) • J. Cruger, Gottsched, Bodmer, and Breitinger (with selections from their writings) (Stuttgart, 1884) ; F. Servaes, Die Poetik Gottscheds and der Schweizer (Strasbourg, 2887) ; E. Wolff, Gottscheds Stellung im deutschen Bildungsleben (2 vols., Kiel, , and G. Waniek, Gottsched and die deutsche Literatur seiner Zeit (Leipzig, 1897) . A movement for the rehabilitation of Gottsched, whose real merits were derided after the victory of romanticism, was undertaken by E. Reichel in a series of works on Gottsched from 1900 onward, and by a new edition (1902-06) of his Gesammelte Schriften. On Frau Gottsched, see P. Schlenther, Frau Gottsched and die biirgerliche Komodie (1886).