Diederich von dem Werder typifies the courtly culture of the first half of the century of German baroque, which was characterized by an interest in literature and by the chivalrous value system of the nobility. In the service of the houses of Hessen, Anhalt, Sweden, and finally Brandenburg, Werder came into contact with many renowned statesmen. Brought up at the court of the landgrave of Hessen-Kassel, Moritz der Gelehrte (the Learned), he knew Romance languages and their literatures and, under the cognomen Der Vielgekörnte (The Many-Seeded One), took a prominent place in the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (Fruit-bringing Society), which sought to defend virtue and nurture the German mother tongue. He is important as the first to translate Lodovico Ariosto's L'Orlando furioso (1516) and Torquato Tasso's Il Goffredo, overo Gerusalemme liberata (Godfrey; or, The Liberation of Jerusalem, 1575) into German.

Werder belonged to an Anhalt family of ancient nobility: he...