Georg Rollenhagen

Rollenhagen, Georg (Bernau nr. Berlin, 1542-1609, Magdeburg), studied at Wittenberg, was a schoolmaster at Halberstadt in 1563, a private tutor in Wittenberg in 1566, and pastor in Magdeburg in 1573. From 1575 he was also headmaster of the school at Magdeburg. Rollenhagen's principal work is the Froschmeuseler (1595), a beast epic after the manner of Reinke de Vos. It is a free adaptation of the Batrachomyomachy, the pseudo-Homeric battle of the frogs and mice, to which Rollenhagen's attention was first drawn in his student days at Wittenberg. Clumsily constructed, the poem nevertheless has many attractive scenes of real observation. The aim is moral, a demonstration of the roles of the commoner, the cleric, and the ruler in the familiar terms of doing their duty in the station to which it has pleased God to call them. His standpoint is Lutheran. Rollenhagen also wrote or adapted biblical plays for school performance: Des Ertzvaters Abraham Leben und Glauben (1569), Spiel vom Tobias (1576), Spiel vom reichen Manne und armen Lazaro (1590, critical edition by J. Bolte, 1929). He was the father of Gabriel Rollenhagen.