His immediate followers, it is true, did not help to advance matters; Bodmer and J. K. Lavater (1741–1801), whose “physiognomic” investigations interested Goethe at a later date, wrote dreary and now long forgotten epics on religious themes. Klopstock’s rhapsodic dramas, together with Macpherson’s Ossian, which in the ’sixties awakened a widespread enthusiasm throughout Germany, were responsible for the so-called “bardic” movement; but the noisy rhapsodies of the leaders of this movement, the “bards” H. W. von Gerstenberg (1737–1823), K. F. Kretschmann (1738–1809) and Michael Denis (1729–1800), had little of the poetic inspiration of Klopstock’s Odes.
The indirect influence of Klopstock as the first inspired poet of modern Germany and as the realization of Bodmer’s theories can, however, hardly be over-estimated. Under Frederick the Great, who, as the docile pupil of French culture, had little sympathy for unregulated displays of feeling, neither Klopstock nor his imitators were in favour in Berlin, but at the university of Halle considerable interest was taken in the movement inaugurated by Bodmer. Here, before Klopstock’s name was known at all, two young poets, J. I. Pyra (1715–1744) and S. G. Lange (1711–1781), wrote Freundschaftliche Lieder (1737), which were direct forerunners of Klopstock’s rhymeless lyric poetry; and although the later Prussian poets, J. W. L. Gleim (1719–1803), J. P. Uz (1720–1796) and J. N. Götz (1721–1781), who were associated with Halle, and K. W. Ramler (1725–1798) in Berlin, cultivated mainly the Anacreontic and the Horatian ode—artificial forms, which kept strictly within the classic canon—yet Friedrich von Hagedorn (1708–1754) in Hamburg showed to what perfection even the Anacreontic and the lighter vers de société could be brought. The Swiss physiologist Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777) was the first German poet to give expression to the beauty and sublimity of Alpine scenery (Die Alpen, 1734), and a Prussian officer, Ewald Christian von Kleist (1715–1759), author of Der Frühling (1749), wrote the most inspired nature-poetry of this period. Klopstock’s supreme importance lay, however, in the fact that he was a forerunner of the movement of Sturm und Drang. But before turning to that movement we must consider two writers who, strictly speaking, also belong to the age under consideration—Lessing and Wieland.
As Klopstock had been the first of modern Germany’s inspired poets, so Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) was the first critic who brought credit to the German name throughout Europe. He was the most liberal-minded exponent of 18th-century rationalism. Like his predecessor Gottsched, whom he vanquished more effectually than Bodmer had done, he had unwavering faith in the classic canon, but “classic” meant for him, as for his contemporary, J. J. Winckelmann (1717–1768), Greek art and literature, and not the products of French pseudo-classicism, which it had been Gottsched’s object to foist on Germany. He went, indeed, still further, and asserted that Shakespeare, with all his irregularities, was a more faithful observer of the spirit of Aristotle’s laws, and consequently a greater poet, than were the French classic writers. He looked to England and not to France for the regeneration of the German theatre, and his own dramas were pioneer-work in this direction. Miss Sara Sampson (1755) is a bürgerliche Tragödie on the lines of Lillo’s Merchant of London, Minna von Barnhelm (1767), a comedy in the spirit of Farquhar; in Emilia Galotti (1772), again with English models in view, he remoulded the “tragedy of common life” in a form acceptable to the Sturm und Drang; and finally in Nathan der Weise (1779) he won acceptance for iambic blank verse as the medium of the higher drama. His two most promising disciples—J. F. von Cronegk (1731–1758), and J. W. von Brawe (1738–1758)—unfortunately died young, and C. F. Weisse (1726–1804) was not gifted enough to advance the drama in its literary aspects. Lessing’s name is associated with Winckelmann’s in Laokoon (1766), a treatise in which he set about defining the boundaries between painting, sculpture and poetry, and with those of the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) and the Berlin bookseller C. F. Nicolai (1733–1811) in the famous Literaturbriefe. Here Lessing identified himself with the best critical principles of the rationalistic movement—principles which, in the later years of his life, he employed in a fierce onslaught on Lutheran orthodoxy and intolerance.
To the widening and deepening of the German imagination C. M. Wieland (1733–1813) also contributed, but in a different way. Although no enemy of pseudo-classicism, he broke with the stiff dogmatism of Gottsched and his friends, and tempered the pietism of Klopstock by introducing the Germans to the lighter poetry of the south of Europe. With the exception of his fairy epic Oberon (1780), Wieland’s work has fallen into neglect; he did, however, excellent service to the development of German prose fiction with his psychological novel, Agathon (1766–1767), which may be regarded as a forerunner of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, and with his humorous satire Die Abderiten (1774). Wieland had a considerable following, both among poets and prose writers; he was particularly looked up to in Austria, towards the end of the 18th century, where the literary movement advanced more slowly than in the north. Here Aloys Blumauer (1755–1789) and J. B. von Alxinger (1755–1797) wrote their travesties and epics under his influence. In Saxony, M. A. von Thümmel (1738–1817) showed his adherence to Wieland’s school in his comic epic in prose, Wilhelmine (1764), and in the general tone of his prose writings; on the other hand, K. A. Kortum (1745–1824), author of the most popular comic epic of the time, Die Jobsiade (1784), was but little influenced by Wieland. The German novel owed much to the example of Agathon, but the groundwork and form were borrowed from English models; Gellert had begun by imitating Richardson in his Schwedische Gräfin (1747–1748), and he was followed by J. T. Hermes (1738–1821), by Wieland’s friend Sophie von Laroche (1730–1807), by A. von Knigge (1752–1796) and J. K. A. Musäus (1735–1787), the last mentioned being, however, best known as the author of a collection of Volksmärchen (1782–1786). Meanwhile a rationalism, less materialistic and strict than that of Wolff, was spreading rapidly through educated middle-class society in Germany. Men like Knigge, Moses Mendelssohn, J. G. Zimmermann (1728–1795), T. G. von Hippel (1741–1796), Christian Garve (1742–1798), J. J. Engel (1741–1802), as well as the educational theorists J. B. Basedow (1723–1790) and J. H. Pestalozzi (1746–1827), wrote books and essays on “popular philosophy” which were as eagerly read as the moralische Wochenschriften of the preceding epoch; and with this group of writers must also be associated the most brilliant of German 18th-century satirists, G. C. Lichtenberg (1742–1799).
Such was the milieu from which sprang the most advanced pioneer of the classical epoch of modern German literature, J. G. Herder (1744–1803). The transition from the popular philosophers of the Aufklärung to Herder was due in the first instance to the influence of Rousseau; and in Germany itself that transition is represented by men like Thomas Abbt (1738–1766) and J. G. Hamann (1730–1788). The revolutionary nature of Herder’s thought lay in that writer’s antipathy to hard and fast systems, to laws imposed upon genius; he grasped, as no thinker before him, the idea of historical evolution. By regarding the human race as the product of a slow evolution from primitive conditions, he revolutionized the methods and standpoint of historical science and awakened an interest—for which, of course, Rousseau had prepared the way—in the early history of mankind. He himself collected and published the Volkslieder of all nations (1778–1779), and drew attention to those elements in German life and art which were, in the best and most precious sense, national—elements which his predecessors had despised as inconsistent with classic formulae and systems. Herder is thus not merely the forerunner, but the actual founder of the literary movement known as Sturm und Drang. New ground was broken in a similar way by a group of poets, who show the results of Klopstock’s influence on the new literary movement: the Göttingen “Bund” or “Hain,” a number of young students who met together in 1772, and for several years published their poetry in the Göttinger Musenalmanach. With the exception of the two brothers, Ch. zu Stolberg (1748–1821) and F. L. zu Stolberg (1750–1819), who occupied a somewhat peculiar position
