Claudius, Matthias

CLAUDIUS, MATTHIAS. - Protestant poet and writer, b. at Reinfeld on 15 Aug. 1740, d. at Hamburg on 21 Jan. 1815. After completing his university studies at Jena, he lived in Copenhagen, Hamburg and Wandsbeck, where he founded and directed for four years the well-known newspaper Wandsbecher Boten, seeking through it to spread a moral and Christian culture.

His political and moral attitude toward the French Revolution was one of clear opposition: an exalter of the pious, modest man, he saw in the Revolution the destruction of the law of love and the exaltation of hatred and of the brutality of instincts. A spirit profoundly dominated by his pietist mysticism, he wrote poems of a melodious and immediate lyricism that have become the common property of the German people as folk songs. He himself sums up in one of his best-known poems his simple but sure religious faith: « Man lives and exists only for a short time... One alone is eternal... and we are in his hands ». His activity as a preacher and as a writer of edification was not without influence on the renewal of the religious spirit even in Austrian Catholic circles in the second decade of the 19th century.

Alda Manghi-