OPITZ, MARTIN (1597-1639). A Ger man poet end literary reformer, born at Bunzlan, Silesin, December 23, 1597. He studied nt Frankfort-on-the-Gder and at Heidelberg; visited, with his friend llandlton, a Dane, the Nether lands and .Jutland (1620) : returned to Silesia (1621) : occupied various subordinate confiden tial posts at small German courts: was knighted by the Emperor Ferdinand II. (1628), and died of the plague in Danzig, August 20, 1639. For a century after his death he passed for the Father of German Poetry, less for his medi ocre verses than for his critical Jr/starches, sun de l'ontempnt Lingua. Tea/oilier(' ("or Scorn of the German Tongue") (1618). and his Bach ron der drat:when I'octrrci (1024, rend. 1876). Opitz borrowed his poetical theories mostly from Scaliger,Heinsins, and Ronsard. In 1627 he made the verses of the oldest German opera. Milne, after Rinuccini. music by Heinrich Schtitz. lie laid great stress on Greek and Latin learning, urging that classic forms ought to be adopted in German poetry. Opitz laid down the law' that rhythm must he pure, and there must be alter nating masculine and feminine rhymes. The
Alexandrine. a measure of French origin, which had come to be the standard French verse in the sixteenth century, he held up as the ideal for German poets. The influence of Opitz did much to secure the acceptance of the literary Getman of Luther in the Catholic States and so to make a common German literature possible. Opitz's works were incompletely gathered in three vol umes (Breslau. 1690; Amsterdam. 1640; Frank fort, 1724). There are Lires by Strehlke (Leip. zig. 1856 ) ; Hoffmann von Fallorsleben (ib..1858) ; Reinhold (Berlin. 1869) ; and Palm (Breslau, 1862). Consult also: Borinski, Die Kunst kb n der Renaissance in Opitzens Bitch ran der deutschen Porterri (Munich, 1883) ; Wi t kowski. Hs/ arelo us and this Buck der Poeterei (Leipzig, 1888) ; Scherer. Kleine Sehriften, Vol. i. (Berlin, 1893) ; Burdach. in Forsehungen our deutsehen Philoloyie (ib., 1894) ; and Perry, PTOM Opitz to Lcssing (Boston. 1884).