GOTTER, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1746-1797), German poet and dramatist, was born on the 3rd of September 1746, at Gotha. After the completion of his university career at Göttingen, he was appointed second director of the Archive of his native town, and subsequently went to Wetzlar, the seat of the imperial law courts, as secretary to the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha legation. In 1768 he returned to Gotha as tutor to two young noblemen, and here, together with H. C. Boie, he founded the famous _Göttinger Musenalmanach_. In 1770 he was once more in Wetzlar, where he belonged to Goethe's circle of acquaintances. Four years later he took up his permanent abode in Gotha, where he died on the 18th of March 1797. Gotter was the chief representative of French taste in the German literary life of his time. His own poetry is elegant and polished, and in great measure free from the trivialities of the Anacreontic lyric of the earlier generation of imitators of French literature; but he was lacking in the imaginative depth that characterizes the German poetic temperament. His plays, of which _Merope_ (1774), an adaptation in admirable blank verse of the tragedies of Maffei and Voltaire, and _Medea_ (1775), a _melodrame_, are best known, were mostly based on French originals and had considerable influence in counteracting the formlessness and irregularity of the _Sturm und Drang_ drama.
Gutter's collected _Gedichte_ appeared in 2 vols. in 1787 and 1788; a third volume (1802) contains his _Literarischer Nachlass_. See B. Litzmann, _Schröder und Gotter_ (1887), and R. Schlösser, _F. W. Gotter, sein Leben und seine Werke_ (1894).
GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG, one of the chief German poets of the middle ages. The dates of his birth and death are alike unknown, but he was the contemporary of Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide, and his epic _Tristan_ was written about the year 1210. In all probability he did not belong to the nobility, as he is entitled _Meister_, never _Herr_, by his contemporaries; his poem--the only work that can with any certainty be attributed to him--bears witness to a learned education. The story of _Tristan_ had been evolved from its shadowy Celtic origins by the French _trouvères_ of the early 12th century, and had already found its way into Germany before the close of that century, in the crude, unpolished version of Eilhart von Oberge. It was Gottfried, however, who gave it its final form. His version is based not on that of Chrétien de Troyes, but on that of a _trouvère_ Thomas, who seems to have been more popular with contemporaries. A comparison of the German epic with the French original is, however, impossible, as Chrétien's _Tristan_ is entirely lost, and of Thomas's only a few fragments have come down to us. The story centres in the fatal voyage which Tristan, a vassal to the court of his uncle King Marke of Kurnewal (Cornwall), makes to Ireland to bring back Isolde as the king's bride. On the return voyage Tristan and Isolde drink by mistake a love potion, which binds them irrevocably to each other. The epic resolves itself into a series of love intrigues in which the two lovers ingeniously outwit the trusting king. They are ultimately discovered, and Tristan flees to Normandy where he marries another Isolde--"Isolde with the white hands"--without being able to forget the blond Isolde of Ireland. At this point Gottfried's narrative breaks off and to learn the close of the story we have to turn to two minor poets of the time, Ulrich von Türheim and Heinrich von Freiberg--the latter much the superior--who have supplied the conclusion. After further love adventures Tristan is fatally wounded by a poisoned spear in Normandy; the "blond Isolde," as the only person who has power to cure him, is summoned from Cornwall. The ship that brings her is to bear a white sail if she is on board, a black one if not. Tristan's wife, however, deceives him, announcing that the sail is black, and when Isolde arrives, she finds her lover dead. Marke at last learns the truth concerning the love potion, and has the two lovers buried side by side in Kurnewal.