The New International Encyclopædia/Klotz, Christian Adolf

KLOTZ, klṓts, (1738-71). A German Latinist and literary critic, born at Bischofswerda. He was educated at Halle, Leipzig, and Jena; qualified as docent and became professor at Jena when only twenty-four years old. A year afterwards (1763) he was chosen professor of philosophy at Göttingen, and in 1765 became professor of oratory at Halle. He is remembered chiefly on account of his quarrel with Pieter Burmann, the younger, and of his criticism of Lessing's Laokoon, the brochure Ueber den Nutzen und Gebrauch der alten geschnittenen Steine (1768), which Lessing answered in his Briefe antiquarischen Inhalts (1768-69). Klotz had a remarkably pure Latin style, which is best shown in his satiric works, Mores Eruditorum, in his Opuscula Latina (1760), and in his journal, the Acta Literaria (1764-72). His other works on classical subjects include the editions of Tyrtæus (1764) and of Vida's De Arte Poetica (1776), Opuscula Philologica et Oratoria (1772), Vindiciæ Horatianæ (1764), and Lectiones Venusinæ (1771). Consult Hansen, Leben und Charakter Herrn Klotz (Halle, 1772), and Hagen, Briefe deutscher Gelehrten an Klotz (1773).