of a reformer rather than with the unbiassed calm of a critic, that the French classical tragedy is dramatic poetry of the first order; he opens the eyes of his countrymen to the greatness of Shakespeare, and grasps, as no one before him had done, the true meaning of Aristotle's Poetics. 1772. After the ill-success of the Hamburg theatre, Lessing never again took an active interest in the fortunes of the German stage. Towards the end of 1771, however, he took up a play, which, intended for the theatre in Hamburg, had been partly written there. This was Emilia Galotti (1772), Emilia a modern version of the story of Virginia, to which Lessing Galotti, had been attracted in earlier years. Like Miss Sara Sampson, Emilia Galotti is a "bürgerliches Trauerspiel"; but while the former was still tentative, and essentially English, the new drama is, in the best sense, a national German tragedy, even although the scene is laid at an Italian Court. The Prince of Guastalla loves the daughter of Odoardo Galotti, but learns that she is on the point of marrying a Count Appiani. The prince's chamberlain, Marinelli, conceives a plot by means of which the marriage may be frustrated; he causes the carriage containing Count Appiani, Emilia, and her mother to be waylaid near a country residence of the prince. The count is shot and Emilia carried to the castle on the pretence that she is being rescued. Her father, however, learns the prince's designs from Orsina, a forsaken mistress of the latter, and, rather than leave his daughter to the prince's mercy, stabs her. The weak point of Emilia Galotti is its denouement; it is questionable, indeed, if any dramatist could justify the murder of Virginia in the eyes of a modern audience, and Lessing was certainly not able. to do so. Apart from this, Emilia Galotti is an admirable tragedy; its construction is masterly, and two at least of its characters, Marinelli and Orsina, take rank with the best in German dramatic literature. Of all Lessing's work, it had most influence upon the subsequent development of the drama, being, as we shall see, in some measure a forerunner of the "Sturm und Drang." Lessing ceased, after the production of Emilia Galotti, it might be said, to be an active factor in the literary movement. It was given to him no more than to his predecessors to keep pace with the rapid growth of German Briefe antiquarischen Inhalts, 1768. literature in the eighteenth century; but he never ceased to fight for that spiritual freedom which always seemed to him the end and aim of the "education of humanity.” While in Hamburg, he had become involved in a conflict with a professor of the University of Halle, C. A. Klotz, who had a reputation as an authority on antiquarian questions. This resulted in two volumes of Briefe antiquarischen Inhalts (1768), which, in 1769, were followed by the beautiful study on Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet. In 1770, Lessing accepted the position of Court librarian in Brunswick, and with the exception of a journey to Vienna, Rome, and Naples in 1775, Wolfenbüttel remained his home for the rest of his life. In 1777, he married Eva König, the widow of one of his Hamburg friends, but she died in little more than a year. In the beginning of 1778 his own health broke down, and he survived his wife only three years, dying in Brunswick on the 15th of February, 1781. The last years of his life were embittered by incessant theological controversy. In 1773, he issued the first volume of his contributions Zur Geschichte und Litteratur, in which, in the spirit of the schichte und Rettungen of earlier years, he brought to light unknown or unjustly forgotten treasures of the library under his care. In the third and fourth volumes of this work, Lessing published a series of fragments by a writer whose name, H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768), was not disclosed for nearly forty years. The fragments discussed religious questions in a rationalistic spirit, and Lessing soon openly avowed his sympathy for the unnamed champion of intellectual freedom. The hostility of the German theological world was again awakened, and J. M. Goeze, the chief pastor of Hamburg, came forward to vindicate the cause of orthodoxy against the freethinking playwright. Lessing's share in the fierce conflict which raged round him is, in many ways, the most remarkable achievement of his whole life, for he had to fight singlehanded, rationalist and theologian being alike embittered against him. The writings called forth by this controversy in 1778-Eine Duplik, Eine Parabel, Axiomata, and the Anti-Goeze1-have never been surpassed in the literature of theological controversy. Amongst the other prose works of Zur Ge Litteratur, 1773-81. The controversy with Goeze. 1 Werke, 13; Goeze's share in the controversy has been published by E. Schmidt (Litteraturdenkmale, 43-45, Leipzig, 1893). Lessing's last years, the most important are Ernst und Falk: Gespräche für Freymäurer (1778), and the hundred paragraphs on Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, which appeared complete in 1780. 1779. But before his life closed he turned once more to his first love, the drama. In 1779, Nathan der Weise was published, Nathan der a play which clothes in poetic form the ideas underlying all Weise, Lessing's controversial writings. But it would be unjust to regard Nathan as nothing more than a "Tendenzdrama." The nucleus of the plot was a fable which Lessing found in the Decamerone of Boccaccio. In the third act Nathan relates how a certain man possessed a ring of magic power, which rendered all who believed in its virtue pleasing to God and man. This man had three sons whom he loved equally well, and, being unwilling to enrich one at the expense of the others, caused two other rings to be made exactly like the first. The sons, after their father's death, dispute as to which of them possesses the true ring-just as Christian, Jew, and Mohammedan disputed regarding the possession of the true religion -and the judge advises each of them to believe that his ring is the genuine one, and to act accordingly. Turning now to Saladin, who has summoned him to an audience, Nathan points the moral of his tale : "Mein Rath ist aber der ihr nehmt Von Vorurtheilen freyen Liebe nach! Es strebe von euch jeder um die Wette, Die Kraft des Steins in seinem Ring' an Tag Zu legen! komme dieser Kraft mit Sanftmuth, Zu Hülf!" 1 The three types of religion are represented in the play by the Mohammedan Saladin, Nathan the Jew, and a young 1 Act 3, sc. 7 (Werke, 3, 94 f.) Templar; Recha, the adopted daughter of the Jew, ultimately proves to be a Christian and the Templar's sister. The characters are brought almost artificially into relations with one another; there is little plot, and what there is turns upon improbabilities. Written in the rhymeless iambics of the German classic drama,1 Nathan der Weise is less a play for the stage than a dramatic poem; its worth lies in its ideas, its lofty humanity and wise tolerance. Such a poem could only have been produced by a man who, himself a "soldier in the Liberation War of humanity," had been chastened by suffering and had learned the bitter lessons of life. Thus, from whatever side Lessing's activity is regarded, we find that it sums up all that was best in the movement of the century. In this writer, the revolt against the artificial classicism of the later Renaissance and the return to the true antique celebrated triumphs; in his criticism of literature and art, he expressed the ripest judgments of the eighteenth century; while as a creative artist he laid, single-handed, the foundations of the modern German drama, He broke the yoke of that intellectual tyranny which, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, had once more lain heavy on the land of Luther, and thus prepared the way for the founder of modern thought, Immanuel Kant. Lessing is the supreme representative of the intellectual life and ideals of the German Aufklärung," but he may also be said to mark the end of a period. Before his career had reached its close, a new epoch in intellectual history had begun, that which, in after years, was known as "Sturm und Drang." 1 Cp. note on p. 337. 283 CHAPTER V. WIELAND; MINOR PROSE WRITERS. THE writings of Wieland stand somewhat apart from the literature of his time. He is an anomaly in German letters, but one on which much depended. Like Hagedorn in the generation before him, like Heinse a little later, and like a number of writers of the nineteenth century, from Hölderlin down to C. F. Meyer and Friedrich Nietzsche in our own day, he was the representative of an un-German, a Latin, element in the literature. It was largely due to him that the turbulent spirit of the new movement did not outstep all bounds; he helped to counterbalance, not only the moralising sentimentality, which, between 1750 and 1760, came in Richardson's train, but also the extravagant nature-worship of Rousseau which swept across Germany some years afterwards. Wieland's work formed the antidote to the overweening nationalism of the "Sturm und Drang"-a nationalism which, unchecked, might have debarred German classical literature from taking its place among the great literatures of the world. land, 1733 1813. Christoph Martin Wieland 1 was born in the village of Ober- C. M. Wieholzheim, near Biberach in Würtemberg, on the 5th of September, 1733, and grew up under pietistic influences and in the literary atmosphere which had been created by Richardson and Klopstock. This, too, is the atmosphere of his own early literary productions (Anti-Ovid, 1752; Der gepryfte Abraham, 1753). In October, 1752, he accepted an invitation from Bodmer to visit Zurich. After spending some six or seven months under In Zurich. 1 Wieland's Werke, edited by H. Düntzer, 40 vols., Berlin, 1879-82. Selections by F. Muncker, 6 vols., Stuttgart, 1889, and H. Pröhle, in D.Ñ.L., 51-56 [1883-87]. A critical biography of Wieland has yet to be written. Cp. the article in the Allgem. deutsche Biographie, 42 [1897], by M. Koch. |