Johann Rietsch

Who was Johann Rietsch?

Johann Rietsch was a German poet, writing in the High Franconian dialect of his native Nuremberg .

Rietsch was born in Nuremberg, and trained there as a bellmaker, which was at the time a major industry in the city. He was a younger contemporary of Konrad Grübel, and inspired by the latter to write poems in the local Nuremberg dialect as well; these were collected in the volume Anekdoten in Nürnberg Mundart, which proved popular enough to run to a second edition. He gained a general reputation locally for his intelligence and education, owing to his poetry, ability at playing the harp, and command of French. He died young, during the Napoleonic Wars: when Russian troops were quartered in Nuremberg in 1813 on their way to France, Rietsch caught typhus from them, and died in January 1814. His son published a posthumous third edition of his poems much later, with additional poems of his own added, as Gedichte in Nernberger Mundart von alten und von junga Rietsch.