If the increasing interest in German baroque poetry and drama--as well as in the intellectual life of the period, of which the poetry and drama were outward expressions--is to achieve a proper balance, it must take cognizance of the work of Johann Sebastian Mitternacht. A man of formidable learning who overcame considerable early personal difficulties before carving out a successful career in education and in the church, he made significant contributions to the development of the German lyric and the Protestant school drama.

Mitternacht was born on 30 March 1613 in Hardisleben, Thuringia, where his father, Paul Mitternacht, was pastor, schoolmaster, and cantor. A sickly youth whose ill health was thought to have been caused by witchcraft, he was educated at home until the age of seventeen, when he was able to join the senior class at the city school in Naumburg. In 1633 he went to Jena University, where he...