Georg Philipp Harsdorffer

Who was Georg Philipp Harsdorffer?

Georg Philipp Harsdörffer was a Baroque-period German poet and translator.

Born in Nuremberg, he studied law at Altdorf and Strassburg, and subsequently traveled through the Netherlands, England, France and Italy. His knowledge of languages earned him the appellation "the learned." As a member of the Fruitbearing Society he was called der Spielende. In 1644 jointly with Johann Klaj he founded the order of the Pegnitzschäfer, a literary society, in Nuremberg. He was known by the name Strephon among the members of this order.

His writings in German and Latin fill fifty volumes, and a selection of his poems, which are mostly interesting for their form, can be found in Müller's Bibliothek deutscher Dichter des 17ten Jahrhunderts, vol. ix. Widmann wrote a biography of him.

He was the father of Karl Gottlieb Harsdörffer,