Born: December 23, 1597, Bunzlau, Silesia (now Bolesławiec, Poland).
Died: August 20, 1639, Gdańsk, Poland, of the plague: During the pestilence which visited Danzig [Gdańsk] in 1639 he was accosted on Aug. 17 by a diseased beggar to whom he gave an alms [sic], and whose frightful appearance so affected him that he returned home, sickened of the pestilence
(Julian, p. 871).
Buried: Saint Mary’s Church cemetery, Gdańsk, Poland.
Martin was the son of butcher Sebastian Opitz and Martha Rothmann, and husband of Anna Opitz.
Educated at the University of Frankfurt-on-Oder and the University of Heidelberg, he was one of the best known poets of his time. Some have called him the father of German poetry.
In 1625, Emperor Ferdinand II crowned him poet laureate as a reward for a requiem poem written on the death of Archduke Charles of Austria (the emperor’s brother, and Prince-Bishop of Breslau [now Wrocław, Poland]).
In 1635, Opitz moved to Danzig (now Gdańsk) in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where King Władysław IV Vasa of Poland made him his historiographer and secretary. A few years later, the king made Opitz a nobleman with the title von Boberfeld.