Johann Jakob Breitinger

Breitinger, Johann Jakob (Zurich, 1701-76, Zurich), was appointed in 1731 professor of Hebrew and later of Greek at the Zurich grammar school, an appointment which he held for the rest of his long life. A close friend of J. J. Bodmer and his partner in critical enterprises, Breitinger has been somewhat overshadowed by his more mercurial and vocal colleague. He participated in the Discourse der Mahlern and in Von dem Einfluß und Gebrauch der Einbildungskraft zur Ausbesserung des Geschmacks (1727). It was the practice of the two friends for one to give support in a preface to a book written by the other, and Breitinger accordingly wrote the preface to Bodmer's Critische Abhandlung von dem Wunderbaren (1740). In the same year he published his most important work, his Critische Dichtkunst worinnen die poetische Malerei in Absicht auf die Empfindung im Grunde untersuchet und mit Beispielen aus den berühmtesten Alten und Neuern erläutert wird (with a preface by Bodmer). This two-volume treatise sets out the literary ideas current at the time—poetry is an imitation of nature and its aim is moral teaching; but Breitinger's rejection of rhyme and his insistence on the importance of the miraculous in poetry were felt by Gottsched to be a provocation. Breitinger's conception of ‘das Wunderbare’ is severely limited; he calls it ‘ein vermummtes Wahrscheinliches’. An unostentatious but sound scholar, Breitinger produced editions of the Septuagint, of the fables of U. Boner and of Opitz's works, and was in charge of the Zurich revision of the Bible in 1772.