Barthold Heinrich Brockes

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Brockes, Barthold Hinrich (Hamburg, 1680-1747, Ritzebüttel), a prominent citizen of Hamburg with a gift for poetry, came of a patrician merchant family. He studied law at Halle (1700-2) and at the Reichskammergericht in Wetzlar. At 22 he went on the grand tour, visiting parts of Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Holland, and England, returning to Hamburg in 1704. For the next sixteen years he lived a life of leisure in Hamburg, devoting himself to poetry. He became a senator of Hamburg in 1720 and mayor of Ritzebüttel in 1735. In 1714 Brockes became one of the founders of the Teutschübende Gesellschaft and, after its demise in 1717, he joined the Patriotische Gesellschaft (1724), to whose organ, the Moral Weekly (see Moralische Wochenschriften) Der Patriot, he contributed until 1726. Brockes's first poetic work is an oratorio in the highly ornamented and florid baroque manner (Der für die Sünden der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus, 1712); it was set to music by G. R. Keiser, G. F. Handel (Händel), and G. P. Telemann. Seven numbers of this work were included in the St John Passion of J. S. Bach. Most of Brockes's poetry is contained in a series of 9 vols. (1721-48), each of which bears the title Irdisches Vergnügen in GOTT. As the title indicates, the poems express pleasure at the divine pattern embodied in the sensual world. Brockes writes of sunshine and rain, snow and shadow, nightingale and cornflower, and many other details of nature, and though some of his poems are pedestrian or tritely moral, he often succeeded in expressing with precision things seen, heard, or felt, opening up to poetry a new world of exact perception. Some of the poems from the Irdisches Vergnügen were composed as arias by Handel. Brockes also translated Thomson's poem The Seasons (Die Jahreszeiten, 1745), which, in much altered form, eventually became the libretto of J. Haydn's oratorio Die Jahreszeiten. His works (5 vols.), ed. J. J. Eschenburg, appeared in (1800; Auszug der vornehmsten Gedichte aus dem Irdischen Vergnügen in Gott. Faksimiledruck nach der Ausgabe von 1738, with postscript by D. Bode, in 1965. A reprint of the edition of 1721-48 appeared in 1970 in 9 vols.

Barthold Heinrich Brockes (September 22, 1680 – January 16, 1747) was a German poet.

Barthold Brockes, Portrait by Dominicus van der Smissen

He was born at Hamburg and educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums. He studied jurisprudence at Halle, and after extensive travels in Italy, France and the Netherlands, settled in Hamburg in 1704. In 1720 he was appointed a member of the Hamburg senate, and entrusted with several important offices. Six years (from 1735 to 1741) he spent as Amtmann (magistrate) at Ritzebüttel. He died in Hamburg.

Brockes' poetic works were published in a series of nine volumes under the fantastic title Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott (1721–1748); he also translated Giambattista Marini's La Strage degli innocenti (1715), Alexander Pope's Essay on Man (1740) and James Thomson's Seasons (1745). His poetry has small intrinsic value, but it is symptomatic of the change which came over German literature at the beginning of the 18th century. His libretto Der für die Sünden der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus (1712) was one of the first passion oratorios--a free, poetic meditation on the passion story without the use of an evangelist character. It was quite popular and was set to music by Reinhard Keiser (1712), Georg Philipp Telemann (1716), George Frideric Handel (1716), Johann Mattheson (1718), Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1725) and Johann Friedrich Fasch (1723), among others.

The children of Brockes by Balthasar Denner

He was one of the first German poets to substitute for the bombastic imitations of Marini, to which he himself had begun by contributing, a clear and simple diction. He was also a pioneer in directing the attention of his countrymen to the new poetry of nature which originated in England. His verses, artificial and crude as they often are, express a reverential attitude towards nature and a religious interpretation of natural phenomena which was new to German poetry and prepared the way for Klopstock.

References

• Brockes' autobiography, published by JM Lappenberg in the Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburger Geschichte, ii. pp. 167 if. (1847)
• A. Brandi, B. H. Brockes (1878)
• David Strauss, Brockes und H. S. Reimarus (Gesammelte Schriften, ii).

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

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Name	Brockes, Barthold Heinrich
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Date of birth	September 22, 1680
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Date of death	January 16, 1747
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