Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim
German poet (1719–1803)
Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim (2 April 1719 – 18 February 1803) was a German poet, commonly associated with the Enlightenment and Rococo movements.
Life
Gleim was born at the small town of Ermsleben in the Principality of Halberstadt, then part of Prussia. His father, a tax collector, and his mother died early. He attended school in Wernigerode and from 1738 onwards studied law at the University of Halle, where he established a circle of young poets together with his friends Johann Uz and Johann Nikolaus Götz.
Having obtained his final degree, he worked as a tutor in Berlin, where in 1743–44 he became secretary to the Hohenzollern prince Frederick William of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Gleim accompanied his employer in the Second Silesian War and made the acquaintance of Ewald Christian von Kleist, whose devoted friend he became. When the prince was killed during the Prussian siege of Prague, Gleim became secretary to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau; but he soon gave up his position, not being able to bear the roughness of the "Old Dessauer".
In 1747, after again living in Berlin for a few years, he was appointed secretary of the Halberstadt Cathedral chapter. From 1756 he also served as a canon at the nearby Walbeck monastery. He became known as "Father Gleim" throughout all literary Germany on account of his kind-hearted though inconsiderate and undiscriminating patronage alike of the poets and poetasters of the period.
“Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim” enters the record as german poet (1719–1803). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Johann, Wilhelm and Ludwig can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q64364. VIAF identifies the subject as 61617445. The Library of Congress control number is n85387700. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1719, 1803, 1738 and 1743.
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This entry incorporates text from “Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.