Born: Ju­ly 2, 1724, Qued­lin­burg, Ger­ma­ny.

Died: March 14, 1803, Ham­burg, Ger­ma­ny.

Buried: Ot­ten­sen, Ger­ma­ny.

Friedrich was the son of Gott­lob Hein­rich Klops­tock, ad­vo­cate and Com­mis­sions­rath at Klop­stock. From 1739 to 1745, he at­tend­ed the school at Schul­pforte, near Naum­burg (where he con­ceived the first idea for his Mes­si­as). He en­tered the Un­i­ver­si­ty of Je­na in the au­tumn of 1742 as a the­ol­o­gy stu­dent, and the Un­i­ver­si­ty of Leip­zig at Eas­ter, 1746. At Leip­zig he met J. A. Cra­mer and be­came one of the con­trib­ut­ors to the Brem­er Beit­räge, in which the first three books of his Mes­si­as ap­peared. In 1748, he be­came a tu­tor in the house of a mer­chant named Weiss at Lang­en­sal­za, and in 1750, he ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to vi­sit Zü­rich, Switz­er­land, where his Mes­si­as had been en­thu­si­as­tic­al­ly re­ceived. In 1751, the Da­nish prime min­is­ter, Count von Berns­toff, in­vit­ed him to take up re­si­dence at the Court of King Fred­er­ick V in Co­pen­ha­gen, so he could fin­ish the Mes­si­as with­out the dis­tract­ion of hav­ing to earn a liv­ing. In 1771, Klop­stock r­etired to Ham­burg, where he lived the rest of his life, ex­cept for a year at Karls­ruhe, at the court of the Mar­grave Karl Fried­rich of Ba­den, who ap­point­ed him Hof­rath. Klop­stock’s works in­clude:

Sources

Hymns

  1. Ach wie hat mein Herz ge­rung­en
  2. Auferstehn, ja auf­er­stehn, wirst du
  3. Deine heil­ige Ge­burt
  4. Du wollst erhören Gott, ihr Flehn
  5. Herr, du wollst sie vol­be­reit­en
  6. Nicht nur streit­en, über­wind­en
  7. Zeige dich uns ohne Hülle
  8. Selig sind des Him­mels Er­ben
  9. Stärke, die zu dies­er Zeit
  10. Um Erd­en wan­del Monde
  11. Wenn ich einst von je­nem Schlum­mer
  12. Zitternd freu­ich mich