STOLBERG, FRIEDRICH-LEOPOLD, Count von, younger brother of the preceding, was b. at Bramstedt, Nov. 7, 1750, studied at Halle and Gottingen, and after a visit to Switzerland and Italy, in the course of which lie made the acquaintance of Goethe at Frankfort, and of Lavater at Zurich, he became in 1777 ministe•-plenipotentiary of the episcopal prince of Lubeck at the court of Denmark. Stolberg filled various other official situations in the course of his public life; but a convert to Roman Catholicism, lie resigned all his employments, and henceforth lived mainly in the tociety of his co-religionists. The causes that led him to take a step which lost bim many old and dear friends, were partly the theological strifes between the Rationalists and ortho dox Lutherans in Holstein—the country where lie mostly resided, and partly his study of the controversial works of the Catholic writers during a second visit to Italy in 1790 91. He died at Sondermfiblen, near Osnabrfick. Dec. 5, 1819. Stolberg is a superior
poet to his elder brother. There is greater boldness in his ideas and imagery, and he displayed a wonderful facility in versification. We have from him specimens of all sorts of poetry, songs, odes, elegies, metrical romances, satires, descriptive verse, and dramas, which are contained in the Werke der Brinier Stolberg (22 vols., Haulb. 1E,2I 26) . See Graf zu Stolberg, by Nienlovius (Mainz, 1846). A very good account of Stolberg's change of faith. and of that literary circle of u. Germany in which he moved until his conversion, will be found in a book called Entiner Skizzen (Skttellcs of Entim, by Wilhelm von Bippeu (Weimar, 1862).