He was born at Juditten (renamed Mendeleyevo in 1947) near Königsberg (Kaliningrad), Brandenburg-Prussia, the son of a Lutheran clergyman, and was baptised in St. Mary's Church.

He studied philosophy and history at the University of Königsberg, but immediately on taking the degree of Magister in 1723, he fled to Leipzig to avoid being drafted into the Prussian army.

[1] As editor of the weeklies Die vernünftigen Tadlerinnen (1725–26) and Der Biedermann (1727), Gottsched started a lifelong career of untiring critical activity.

Directing his criticism at first chiefly at the bombast and absurd affectations of the Second Silesian School, he proceeded to lay down strict laws for the composition of poetry.

They succeeded in bringing about a considerable change in the condition of the German stage by substituting for the prevailing operatic performances translations of French dramas and original plays, and by banishing from it the coarse buffooneries of Hanswurst (Jack Pudding).

Gottsched, although not blind to the beauties of the English writers, clung tenaciously to his principle that poetry must be the product of rules and, in the fierce controversy which for a time raged between Leipzig and Zürich, he was ultimately defeated.

[4] Gottsched's chief work was his Versuch einer kritischen Dichtkunst für die Deutschen (1730), the first systematic treatise in German on the art of poetry from the standpoint of Boileau.