JOHANN GEORG

JACOBI (1740-1814)  , German poet, elder brother of the philosopher, F . H . Jacobi (1743–1819), was born at Dusseldorf on the 2nd of September 1740 . He studied theology at Gottingen and jurisprudence at Helmstedt, and was appointed, in 1766, professor of philosophy in Halle . In this year he made the acquaintance of J . W . L . (" Vater ") Gleim, who, attracted by the young poet's Poetische Versuche (1764), became his warm friend, and a lively literary correspondence ensued between Gleim in Halberstadt and Jacobi in Halle . In order to have Jacobi near him, Gleim succeeded in procuring for him a prebendal stall at the cathedral of Halberstadt in 1769, and here Jacobi issued a number of anacreontic lyrics and sonnets . He tired, however, of the lighter muse, and in 1774, to Gleim's grief, left Halberstadt, and for two years (1774–1776) edited at Dusseldorf the Iris, a quarterly for women readers . Meanwhile, he wrote many charming lyrics, distinguished by exquisite taste and true poetical feeling . In 1784 he became professor of literature at the university of Freiburg im Breisgau, a post which he held until his death there on the 4th of January 1814 .

In addition to the earlier Iris, to which

Goethe, his brother F . H . Jacobi, Gleim and other poets contributed, he published, from 1803–1813, another periodical, also called Iris, in which Klopstock, Herder, Jean Paul, Voss and the brothers Stollberg also collaborated . Jacobi's Sammtliche Werke were published in 1774 (Halberstadt, 3 vols.) . Other editions appeared at Zurich in 1807–1813 and 1825 . See Ungedruckle Briefe von and an Johann Georg Jacobi (Strassburg, 1874) ; biographical notice by Daniel Jacoby in Allg . Deutsche Biographie; Longo, Laurence Sterne and Johann Georg Jacobi (Vienna, 1898) ; arid Leben J . G . Jacobis, von einem seiner Freunde (1822) .