Eminent German littérateur, born near Biberach, a small village in Swabia, son of a pastor of the pietist school; studied at Tubingen; became professor of Philosophy at Erfurt, and settled in Weimar in 1772 as tutor to the two sons of the Duchess Amalia, where he by-and-by formed a friendship with Goethe and the other members of the literary coterie who afterwards settled there; he wrote in an easy and graceful style, and his best work is a heroic poem entitled "Oberon" (1733-1813).