Karl Wilhelm Ramler is one of the background figures on the literary stage of eighteenth-century Germany. He is known as a fine poetic craftsman, an editor and anthologist, a translator of Horace, and a composer of heroic odes in praise of the Prussian royalty.

Ramler was born on 25 February 1725 in Kolberg, Pomerania, to the bank inspector Wilhelm Nikolaus Ramler and Elisabeth Ramler, née Fiddechow. Ramler went to the Latin school in Stettin and later to the famous Waisenhaus gymnasium in Halle, founded by the Pietist H. A. Francke. In these schools Ramler received a thorough training in classical languages, and it was there that his keen philological sense and his love for Roman literature were developed. After a year of listless study of theology at the University of Halle, Ramler went to Berlin in 1743. He became the protégé of Johann Ludwig Gleim, who...