CLAUDIUS, MATTHIAS. - Protestant poet and writer, b. at Reinfeld on 15 Aug. 1740, d. at Amburgo on 21 Jan. 1815. Having completed his university studies at Iena,
he lived in Copenhagen, Amburgo, and Wandsbeck, where he founded and directed for four years the well-known journal Wandsbecher Boten, seeking through it to disseminate a moral and Christian culture.
His political-moral attitude toward the French Revolution was one of clear opposition: an admirer of the pious, modest man, he saw in the Revolution the destruction of the law of love and the exaltation of hatred and the brutality of the instincts. A spirit profoundly governed by his Pietist mysticism, he created poems of melodious and immediate lyricism which became part of the common heritage of the German people as folk songs. He himself summarizes his simple but firm religious faith in one of his best-known poems: “Man lives and exists only for a short time... One alone is eternal... and we are in His hands.” His activity as a prose writer and writer of edifying works was not without influence on the renewal of the religious spirit even in Austrian Catholic circles in the second decade of the 19th century.