Julius Wilhelm Zincgref: Latin Poetry. Edition, Translation, Commentary

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Robert Seidel
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 537435896

As part of the complete works of Julius Wilhelm Zincgref (1591–1635), published in the series Neudrucke deutscher Literatur by De Gruyter, this volume presents the first critical edition of his Latin poems together with German prose translations and literary-historical commentary. Zincgref, who is known among German literature specialists primarily as the editor of Martin Opitz's early poems, also emerged in the 1620s as an extremely versatile writer. As a Palatine official and supporter of the “Winter King” Frederick V, he used German and Latin as well as multimedia forms of publication to encourage public action from an imperial patriotic perspective that was grounded in ideas of neo-Stoicism and political Calvinism. Zincgref's Latin poems, which are the subject of this edition project, were aimed more indirectly at political-confessional action. They rather had the purpose of building a consensus among intellectuals in the Electoral Palatinate as well as with friends and associates at home and abroad, to strengthen group identity and to negotiate relevant topics in the scholarly medium of the classical Latin literary language. At the center of the project is the approximately two-hundred-page "Triga amico-poetica", a collection of occasional poems in which Zincgref and his fellow students Friedrich Lingelsheim and Johann Leonhard Weidner were involved. The formal range of the texts extends from the two-line epigram to genres of medium length such as the epyllion or elegy. Their significance goes far beyond mere documentation of friendly relations. A thorough analysis, which also identifies the complex rhetorical strategies, striking references to antiquity and intertextual references, reveals how closely the political-confessional concerns and literary aspirations of the authors involved were interconnected. In addition to the "Triga", the edition contains all of Zincgref's other Latin poems, such as the "Epos ad Fridericum", written in support of the political and military plans of Frederick V. The historical-critical edition also includes newly identified (hitherto unknown) texts by Zincgref and, above all, supplementary sources that are used for the commentary on the poems. The edition presents text and translation in synoptic form and with a critical apparatus; the commentary section contains brief introductions to the texts and individual notes on passages requiring explanation. The general introduction analyzes Zincgref's position within the framework of Palatine humanism and gives a comprehensive interpretation of his Latin poetry.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants