Friedrich Leopold Von Stolberg

1750-1819. Poet and diplomat. Born in Holstein, he was educated in a Lutheran Pietistic environment, thereafter reading law at Halle and at Göttingen, where he was a member of the Hainbund, a German poets' circle. Influenced by F.G. Klopstock* and himself a friend of Goethe,* he was envoy of the Protestant prince-bishop of Lübeck to the Danish court (1777), chief administrator at Eutin (1781), and Danish ambassador to Berlin (1789). His conversion to the Roman Catholic Church (1800) was widely noticed, and he resigned his posts. He wrote songs, plays, hymns, and odes, translated Homer, Plato, and Aeschylus, and produced Geschichte der Religion Jesu Christi (15 vols., 1806-18), which covered the period from OT times up to a.d. 430.