Philipp von Zesen

Philipp von Zesen was born in 1619 in Priorau, near Dessau, the son of a Lutheran pastor. He studied at Wittenberg and then, lacking employment, lived by his pen, as a translator and proofreader for Amsterdam publishers: he is regarded as one of the first professional writers in Germany. In 1643 he founded in Hamburg the Deutschgesinnte Genossenschaft, a society devoted to the German language, and coined words to replace foreign borrowings; several have remained in use. Ennobled in 1653, he died in Hamburg in 1689.

In the catalogue 1

• NovelAdriatische RosemundPhilipp von Zesen · 1645not translated into EnglishLiteraturePublic domain