Georg Philipp Harsdörffer (1 November 1607 – 17 September 1658) was a Jurist,[1] Baroque-period German poet and translator.
[1] As a member of the Fruitbearing Society (Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft) he was called der Spielende (the player).
In 1644 jointly with Johann Klaj he founded the Pegnesischer Blumenorden, a literary society, in Nuremberg.
[5] His writings in German and Latin fill fifty volumes, and a selection of his poems, which are mostly interesting for their form, can be found in Müller's Bibliothek deutscher Dichter des 17ten Jahrhunderts, vol.
Some of these texts are important to German music history; including Harsdörffer's libretto to Seelewig which is the oldest surviving German-language opera.