Johann Diederich Gries (7 February 1775 - 9 February 1842) was a German poet and socialite during the Romantic period. His extensive list of friends and acquaintances included Goethe and Schiller. Viewed through the prism of intervening years, his most enduring contribution is as a translator. Life Johann Diederich Gries was born into a prosperous Hamburg family, the fourth of his parents' seven recorded sons. Franz Lorenz Gries (1731-1803), his father, was a merchant and city senator. His mother Johanna also came from a mercantile background. He undertook an apprenticeship in business with a Hamburg wholesale merchant for three years between 1793 and 1795 which, he let it be known, was a miserable thing to have to do. After his elder brother Ludwig had intervened with their father on his behalf he was permitted to embark on a period of study in Law, enrolling at the University of Jena in October 1795. At Jena his naturally affability, his abundance of inoffensive humour and his exceptional talent as a piano player all combined to gain him ready access to the homes and social circles of the professors. He also acquired an extensive network of lifelong friend among his student contemporaries, such as Johann Georg Rist, Johann Friedrich Herbart, August von Herder, also including a couple of years later Georg Arnold Heise, August Ludwig Hülsen and . At the home of the anatomist Justus Christian Loder he got to know Goethe and Schiller, Herder and Fichte. It was nevertheless striking that while his literary awareness and social circle developed rapidly, he approached his studies in jurisprudence with a marked absence of diligence. Early in 1797 he returned to Hamburg for a visit during which he renewed his friendship with Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. That summer he accompanied Caroline Schlegel and her daughter to Dresden where Schlegel was staying. That also gave him the opportunity to meet Schelling by whom he was much impressed. Around this time he also visited Freiberg where he was warmly received by . His own first published poems were enthusiastically received when they appeared in the Schiller's Musenalmanach and in Wieland's Teutsche Merkur. In April 1799, after seven or eight terms, a faced serious warnings from his father about his perceived failure to engage seriously in his legal studies, and was obliged, with a heavy heart, to leave Jena. He completed his degree in