One of the most talented German women poets of the seventeenth century, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg produced a large body of religiously inspired poetry and prose. She was highly regarded by her contemporaries and is today considered to be a master of German baroque poetry.

Greiffenberg was born on 7 September 1633 in Castle Seisenegg, near Amstetten on the Ybbs in Lower Austria, into a Protestant family. On the paternal side her family had acquired its aristocratic title through her grandfather's rise into the higher echelons of the administration of the Hapsburg court; her mother, Eva Maria Freiin von Pranck zu Reinthal und Froudsberg, was descended from an old aristocratic family. Greiffenberg's father, Johann Gottfried von Greiffenberg, died when she was seven, leaving huge debts, but his half brother, Hans Rudolf Linsmayr, Freiherr (Baron) von Greiffenberg, restored the family's estates and copper mine to their previous profitability. Greiffenberg's mother exerted...