Lohenstein, Daniel Caspar Von

Related Category: German Literature: Biographies

(dä´nēĕl käs´pär fən lō´ənshtīn), 1635–83, German dramatist, novelist, and poet. Lohenstein is credited with having created baroque tragedy in Germany. He employed ancient themes of sensuality and inhumanity in Cleopatra (1661), Sophonisbe (1680), and Ibrahim Bassa (1650). His mammoth courtly novel Grossmütiger Feldherr Arminius [magnanimous General Arminius] (1689–90) is a roman à clef dedicated to the German nobility. A collection of his poetry, Gedichte, was published in 1966.