Biography
Baron and sometime Lord Chamberlain to Karl I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg.1 Bassewitz was also a translator, who was the first to translate George Lillo's The Merchant of London into German (as Der Kaufmann von London), although he appears to have translated it from a previous French translation rather than from Lillo's original in English.2
Bassewitz was almost certainly a close relation of Lütke Cuno Wolfradt von Bassewitz (1728-1796), Hauptmann of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, son of Ludolph Friedrich von Bassewitz and Magdalene Sybille.
- 1Boswell on the Grand Tour I, p. 51
- 2Cf. Daunicht, R. (1956) "The First German Translator of George Lillo's Merchant of London and the First Performances of the Play in Germany" in Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 9:2, 324-330
Life with Boswell
Boswell visited Bassewitz, then Lord Chamberlain, upon his return to Brunswick on August 8, 1764.