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Barthold Heinrich Brockes (September 22, 1680 – January 16, 1747) was a Germanpoet.
He was born inHamburg and educated at theGelehrtenschule des Johanneums. He studiedjurisprudence atHalle, and after extensive travels inItaly, France and theNetherlands, settled in Hamburg in 1704. In 1720 he was appointed a member of theHamburg senate, and entrusted with several important offices. Six years (from 1735 to 1741) he spent asAmtmann (bailiff) at Ritzebüttel. He died in Hamburg.
Brockes' poetic works were published in a series of nine volumes under the fantastic titleIrdisches Vergnügen in Gott (1721–1748); he also translatedGiambattista Marino'sLa Strage degli innocenti (1715),Alexander Pope'sEssay on Man (1740) andJames Thomson'sThe Seasons (1745). His poetry has small intrinsic value, but it is symptomatic of the change which came over German literature at the beginning of the 18th century. HislibrettoDer für die Sünden der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus (1712), also known as theBrockes Passion, was one of the firstpassionoratorios—a free, poetic meditation on thepassion.[citation needed] It was quite popular and was set to music byReinhard Keiser (1712),Georg Philipp Telemann (1716),George Frideric Handel (1716),Johann Mattheson (1718),Johann Friedrich Fasch (1723),Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1725), andJohann Caspar Bachofen (1759), among others.
He was one of the first German poets to substitute for the bombastic imitations of Marini, to which he himself had begun by contributing, a clear and simple diction. He was also a pioneer in directing the attention of his countrymen to the new poetry of nature which originated in England. His verses, artificial and crude as they often are, express a reverential attitude towards nature and a religious interpretation of natural phenomena which was new to German poetry and prepared the way forKlopstock.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: "Brockes, Barthold Heinrich".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 4 (11th ed.). 1911. p. 624.
