Voss, Johann Heinrich (Sommersdorf nr. Waren, Mecklenburg, 1751-1826, Heidelberg), of humble rural origin, was educated at the grammar school of Neubrandenburg, but was at first too poor to go to a university and became a private tutor. In 1772 he was helped to study at Göttingen by H. C. Boie. He was one of the founder members of the Göttinger Hainbund in September 1772, and as its representative visited Klopstock in Hamburg in 1774.

In 1775 he took over the editorship of the Göttinger Musenalmanach and continued to publish an Almanach independently after L. F. G. von Goeckingk had succeeded him. Thereafter two Almanachs coexisted. Voß married Boie's sister Ernestine in 1777 and became headmaster (Rektor) of the school at Ottendorf in 1778. Since 1776 he had been working at a translation of the Odyssey into German hexameters and this appeared in 1781 as Homers Odüssee. Voß subsequently reverted to the spelling Odyssee. In 1782 he became headmaster at Eutin, where he remained for twenty-three years. An interest in Theocritus prompted him to attempt German idylls, some of which he wrote in dialect. The idylls, published as Idyllen in 1801, include ‘Der Frühlingsmorgen’, ‘De Winterawend’ (‘Der Winterabend’), and, perhaps his finest work, ‘Der siebzigste Geburtstag’. Some are in dialogue, and political criticism and indignation are woven into others, for Voß, recalling his oppressed childhood, remained a vivid hater of tyrants all his life (see Leibeigenen, Die). His best-known work in idyll form is the substantial poem Luise. Ein ländliches Gedicht in drei Idyllen (1795). Many of his shorter poems are pastoral songs. In Eutin Voß continued his translation of Homer and published the Iliad and Odyssey together in 1793 as Homers Werke. In 1805 he was granted a pension by the Grand Duke of Baden and thereafter lived at Heidelberg.

As he grew older, Voß's hatred of old political and new literary ideas increased, and he aggressively denounced aristocrats and Romantic littérateurs. He conducted a specially venomous campaign against Friedrich von Stolberg, who had once been his benefactor (Wie ward Fritz Stolberg ein Unfreier?, 1819). In addition to Homer, Voß translated Virgil (Georgics, 1789), Ovid (Metamorphoses, 1798), Horace (1806), Aristophanes (1821), Propertius (1830), and Shakespeare (1818-29). Sämtliche poetische Werke, ed. A. Voß, appeared in 1835 and correspondence (4 vols.), ed. A. Voß, 1829-33, and a selection of his works, ed. A. Sauer, in 1885 (ed. H. Voegt, 1966).

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