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Johann Michael Moscherosch

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JOHANN MICHAEL MOSCHEROSCH (1601-1669), German satirist, was born at Willstadt, near Strassburg, on the 5th of March 1601. He received a careful early education at the Latin School at Strassburg, and in 1620 began his academic career as a student of jurisprudence. After being for some years tutor in the family of the Graf von Leiningen-Dachsburg, he finally became privy councillor to the landgravine of HesseCassel. He died at Worms on the 4th of April 1669. Under the name of "Der Traumende," Moscherosch was a member of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, a society founded by Prince Ludwig of Anhalt-Cdthen, in 1617, for the purification of the German language and the fostering of German literature. His most famous work is the Wunderliche and wahrhafige Gesichte Philanders von Sittewald (anagram of Willstadt) (1642-1643), for which he took as his model the Suenos (visions) of the famous Spaniard Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas (1580-1645). Hardly inferior to the "visions" is the Insomnis cura parentum, Christliches Vermeichtnis eines Vaters, which was published at Strassburg in 1643 and again in 1647. Noteworthy is also Die Patientia, discovered in 1897 in MS. in the municipal library at Hamburg.

Selections from Moscherosch's writings have been published by W. Dittmar (1830), F. Bobertag (in Kurschner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur, xxxii., 1884), and K. Muller (in Reclam's Universalbibliothek). Reprints of the Insomnis cura parentum and Patientia have been published by L. Pariser (1893 and 1897), who is also the author of Beitrage zu einer Biographic von Moscherosch (1891). See also M. Nickels, Moscherosch als Padagog (1883); J. Wirth Moscherosch's Gesichte (1888).