Johann Hellwig

With the publication of this exhaustive personal bibliography, a new name must be added to the inventory of notable German Baroque authors. Johann Hellwig (1609-1674), a well-known physician in Nuremberg and Regensburg, was one of the earliest and most active members of the renowned Pegnesischer Blumenorden. Beginning as a disciple of Georg Philipp Harsdorffer and Sigmund von Birken, he developed during the 1640s into a significant poet in his own right. Although he has often received casual mention in literary history as a writer of worth, no book-length study on Hellwig exists; nor is he listed independently in Dunnhaupt's standard Bibliographisches Handbuch der Barockliteratur. Professor Reinhart has described not only every previously known work but has brought to light a surprisingly large number of other, often obscure, items as well, including Hellwig's letters and occasional poems (the latter alone total nearly three hundred) and a lengthy necrology in manuscript form that promises to be of future value to cultural historians of early modern Nuremberg. He has been able to establish ideal titles as well as detail unique physical features of the various copies. The descriptive bibliography itself, comprising the central chapter of the book, is framed on one side by a carefully, documented career biography and on the other by an annotated survey of notice and opinion of Hellwig from 1634 to the present; a supplemental secondary bibliography and indexes of libraries and names complete the study. The result is a highly reliable and useful edition that will be indispensable to scholars and bibliophiles alike.