Quirinus Kuhlmann represents the culmination of various important baroque traditions: mystical poetry, numerology, and the attempt to rejuvenate the German language. Moving back and forth among various groups of religious dissenters in cities such as Leiden, Lübeck, London, Amsterdam, and Paris, he regarded his life as "Ein Wunderwerk aller Wunderwerke" (a miracle among all miracles) and envisioned himself the new Messiah. Kuhlmann is chiefly remembered as the author of a series of volumes of ecstatic lyrics in which he pushed the expressiveness of German to its limits, exploding its grammatical and semantic conventions.

Kuhlmann was born in Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland) on 25 February 1651 to Quirinus Kuhlmann, a Lutheran merchant, and Rosina Kuhlmann, née Ludwig. His father died in 1654 or 1655. With the help of a sponsor, the imperial councillor Georg Schöbel, his mother sent him in 1661 to the celebrated Magdalena-Gymnasium in his hometown...