Samuel Gotthold Lange

Samuel Gotthold Lange, painting by Joseph Ignatius Span, 1758, Gleimhaus Halberstadt

Title page of Lange's translation of Horace (1752)

Horace translation: a reader has highlighted mistakes criticized by Lessing in red pencil

Samuel Gotthold Lange (born March 22, 1711 in Halle (Saale) ; † June 25, 1781 in Beesenlaublingen , district of Bernburg ) was a German poet, pastor, translator and pietist .

Life

Joachim Lange's son received his first lessons from his father and private tutors. He then moved to the convent school of our dear women in Magdeburg until he was 9 years old and then moved to the school of the orphanage in Halle. At the age of sixteen he was already attending the theological lectures at the University of Halle . Here he also frequented scientific lectures and founded a union with Jakob Immanuel Pyra in 1733 , which is known as the Halle Poets' Circle . This was a "society for the promotion of the German language, poetry and eloquence". In it they turned against Gottsched . Pyras' collection of "Thyrsis' and Damon's friendship songs" (editor with JJ Bodmer, 1745, expanded in 1749) took Lange after Pyras' death as the starting point for further attacks against Gottsched.

From 1737 until his death, Lange worked as a pastor in Laublingen. In 1740 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina and in 1751 a foreign member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .

plant

The best known are Lange's metric translations of Horace's "Odes" (Halle 1752), especially because Gotthold Ephraim Lessing felt they were "completely unsuccessful". At that time, Lange had quarreled with pretty much every enlightener and irritated Lessing, who then wrote devastating reviews of Lange (“Vademecum for SG Lange”).

Furthermore, Lange published a “Collection of learned and friendly letters” (Halle 1769–1770, 2 vols.) This gives a comprehensive insight into the history of the literary movement of his time.

family

Lange married on August 13, 1737 in the Erfurt Predigerkirche Anna Dorothea Gnüge (born October 17, 1715 in Eisenach, died 1764), the daughter of the Erfurt deacon Johann Andreas Gnugt and his wife Sabina Magdalena Rosner. The son Ludolph (alias Hylas), who died in 1764, is known from this marriage.

Works

• Horatian Odes and a selection from Des Quintus Horatius Flaccus Odes , Five Books (translated by Samuel Gotthold Lange). Facsimile print after the editions of 1747 and 1752. With an afterword by Frank Jolles. Stuttgart: JB Metzler, 1971
• (with Georg Friedrich Meier ): Man. A moral weekly , reissued, Hildesheim, Olms 1992
• Secret News on the History of Persia. Translated from the French (by Samuel Gotthold Lange) "Cölln" (di Rostock, Koppe) 1746
• Collection of learned and friendly letters , first and second part. Hall 1769, 1770. (digitized)

literature

• Hallesche Enlightenment - Laublinger Dichterkreis. Ed. V. Bartsch, E. & Sailer, J. Library of Central German Thinkers. Abteil.1, Vol.5 Halle - Ammendorf, Teichmann, 1992
• Christoph Siegrist :  Lange, Samuel Gotthold. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 549 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Erich Schmidt :  Lange, Samuel Gotthold . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1883, pp. 651-653.
• Karl Heinrich Jördens: Lexicon of German poets and prose writers . ( Online with Google Book Search )

Web links

Commons : Samuel Gotthold Lange  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Samuel Gotthold Lange in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Samuel Gotthold Lange  in the German Digital Library
• Works by Samuel Gotthold Lange at Zeno.org .