After attending the school of St. Afra in Meissen, he entered Leipzig University in 1734 as a student of theology, but in 1738 Gellert broke off his studies as his family could no longer afford to support him and became a private tutor for a few years.

[3] Gellert was esteemed and venerated by his students, and others who knew him, due in great part to his personal character; he was known to be unflaggingly amiable and generous, and of unaffected piety and humility.

[5] He wrote in order to raise the religious and moral character of the people, and to this end employed language which, though at times prolix, was always correct and clear.

[3] His immensely successful collection of fables and stories in verse, Fabeln und Erzählungen, first published in 1746, with a second part appearing in 1748, established his literary reputation.

A band of high-spirited youths, of whom Gellert was one, resolved to free themselves from what were seen as the conventional trammels of such pedants, and began a revolution which was finally consummated by Schiller and Goethe.

[9] His novel Leben der schwedischen Gräfin von G. (1746), a weak imitation of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, is remarkable for being the first German attempt at a psychological novel.

[10] Regarded by many correspondents as a teacher also of good writing style,[2] in 1751 he published a volume of model letters, along with an essay on letter-writing (Briefe, nebst einer praktischen Abhandlung von dem guten Geschmacke in Briefen).

The Victory's Won" is a translation of Gellert's "Jesu lebt, mit ihm auch ich" (Jesus lives, I with him") from Geistliche Oden und Lieder.