Uz, Johann Peter

Johann Peter Uetz ( German: Johann Peter Uz ; October 3, 1720 , Ansbach - May 12, 1796 , ibid.) - German poet, representative of "German anacreontics", member of the "Union of Gallic poets", which he founded together with I.V. L. Glaim .

Born into a wealthy family of jeweler and inspector of Margrave. He studied at the Ansbach Gymnasium Carolinum, then in 1739-1743 he studied law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Halle , after which he returned to his native Ansbach. His father had already passed away a long time ago, so he lived for the first time with his mother and sister in rather cramped conditions, first worked as an intern at the Ansbach Justices College. In 1746, together with I.N. Goetz, he translated and published the odes of Anacreon . In 1748, he took an unpaid post of secretary at the justice collegium, which he held for twelve years. In 1763 he became an assessor at the imperial court in Nuremberg , and in 1790 - a judge.

In 1749, Glame, to whom Uz sent all his works, published their collection (Lyrische Gedichte, second edition of 1775). Uts's “Theodicy” (1755) is a poetic exposition of Leibniz's philosophical worldview; he also wrote the Epistles and the comic epic Der Sieg des Liebesgottes, an imitation of Alexander Pop , directed against “new-fangled poetry,” that is, against the exaggeration of Klopstock’s lyrics and Milton’s Bodmer rehash. The didactic poem Die Kunst stets fröhlich zu sein (1760) was written in an Alexandrian verse . The collected works of Uts ( German Sämmtliche Werke ), published during his lifetime (1768), was reprinted by Christian Felix Weiss with a biography of F. von Schlichtegroll (1804).