Martin Opitz (1597–1639), a Poet in the Diplomatic Service During the Thirty Years' War

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of the greatest German poets of the Baroque era, Martin Opitz. Although during his lifetime he became one of the most honoured writers, poetry seldom brought him financial stability and independence, which he achieved thanks to his diplomatic service under various influential rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. M. Opitz never had a high diplomatic rank, usually holding the positions of an agent or a secretary, which, however, did not prevent him from often being in the thick of political events. Opitz's life spanned the years of the Thirty Years' War, which turned his life upside down. The article focuses on the problem of the influence of M. Opitz's diplomatic activity on the formation of his patriotic views and the development of the German national idea in his poetic works, thanks to which he became widely known. During his diplomatic trips, Opitz, by virtue of his pronounced artistic emotional perception of the events of the Thirty Years' War, tragic for the German lands, divided the world around him into “friends”, “Germans”, and “aliens”, i.e. enemies who sought, as the poet argued, “to enslave Germany.” The article evaluates the role of diplomatic activity in the life of Opitz in the formation of the specific phenomenon of German nationalism. The article is based on rare, only partially introduced into academic circulation historiography, where a special place is occupied by biographical materials, namely the private correspondence of M. Opitz, his first biography, compiled by a close friend Ch. Koeler, and the funeral sermon by the poet Jh. Rist.