Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm

Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm (26 December 1723 – 19 December 1807) was a German-born French-language journalist, art critic, diplomat and contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. In 1765 Grimm wrote Poème lyrique, an influential article for the Encyclopédie on lyric and opera librettos. Like Christoph Willibald Gluck Grimm became interested in opera reform. According to Martin Fontius, a German literary theorist, "sooner or later a book entitled The Aestatic ideas of Grimm will have to be written.

Grimm was born at Regensburg, the son of Johann Melchior Grimm (1682–1749), a pastor, and Sibylle Margarete Grimm, (née Koch) (1684–1774). He studied at the University of Leipzig, where he came under the influence of Johann Christian Gottsched and of Johann August Ernesti, to whom he was largely indebted for his critical appreciation of classical literature. When nineteen, he produced a tragedy, Banise, which met with some success. After two years of study literature and philosophy, he returned to his home town, where he was attached to the household of Count Schönborn. In 1749, he accompanied his pupil, the young Schönborn, to Paris. There, August Heinrich, Count Friesen appointed him as his secretary. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Confessions that Grimm played a cembalo and acted also as reader to the eldest son of Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, the young hereditary prince of Saxe-Gotha.

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