Harsdörffer, Georg Philipp (1607-1658), German poet, was born at Nuremberg on the 1st of November 1607. He studied law at Altdorf and Strassburg, and subsequently travelled through Holland, England, France and Italy. His knowledge of languages gained for him the appellation “the learned,” though he was as little a learned man as he was a poet. As a member of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft he was called der Spielende (the player). Jointly with Johann Klaj (q.v.) he founded in 1644 at Nuremberg the order of the Pegnitzschäfer, a literary society, and among the members thereof he was known by the name of Strephon. He died at Nuremberg on the 22nd of September 1658. His writings in German and Latin fill fifty volumes, and a selection of his poems, interesting mostly for their form, is to be found in Müller’s Bibliothek deutscher Dichter des 17ten Jahrhunderts, vol. ix. (Leipzig, 1826).
His life was written by Widmann (Altdorf, 1707). See also Tittmann, Die Nürnberger Dichterschule (Göttingen, 1847); Hodermann, Eine vornehme Gesellschaft, nach Harsdörffers “Gesprächspielen” (Paderborn, 1890); T. Bischoff, “Georg Philipp Harsdörffer” in the Festschrift zur 250 jährigen Jubelfeier des Pegnesischen Blumenordens (Nuremberg, 1894); and Krapp, Die ästhetischen Tendenzen Harsdörffers (Berlin, 1904).
