Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg

Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg (7 November 1750 – 5 December 1819), was a German lawyer, and translator born at Bramstedt in Holstein (then a part of Denmark).

A few years after his birth the family moved to Copenhagen and soon formed friendships with distinguished literary men, especially Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, who became a mentor to the brothers after the death of their father in 1765.

The two brothers then studied in Göttingen and were a prominent members of the Göttinger Hainbund, a literary society of young men who had high aspirations for the unity of the country, and who cultivated German poetry.

[2] After leaving the university, in 1775 the brothers made a journey to Switzerland in company with the famed poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

[3] In 1777 Friedrich Leopold was appointed envoy of the prince bishop of Lübeck at the Court of Copenhagen, but often stayed at Eutin to spend time with his college friend and member of the Dichterbund, Johann Heinrich Voss.

In June, 1800, he joined the Catholic Church in the private chapel of the Princess Gallitzin at Osnabrück, and on 22 August he resigned his various positions, retiring to Münster in Westphalia.

For his conversion to Catholicism, Friedrich Leopold was severely attacked by his former friend Voss (Wie ward Fritz Stolberg zum Unfreien?, 1819).

He produced translations of the Iliad (1778), of Plato (1796-1797), Aeschylus (1802), and Ossian (1806); he published in 1815 a Leben Alfreds des Grossen, and a voluminous Geschichte der Religion Jesu Christi (17 vols., 1806–1818).