The German Genius

abundant imagery,” had a profound effect upon German readers. To be understood sympathetically today, they must be read against mid-eighteenth-century theories of genius—that the products of genius are glimpses of the divine. 31 Classical in form, the cantos switch from religion to science to abstract philosophical subjects, interspersed with vivid real episodes, all sustained by brilliant language, the aim—one aim—being to show that the poet can foment as much enthusiasm and faith as the Messiah.
    Klopstock was a many-sided man, too. In his treatise Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik (The German Republic of Scholars; 1774), which impressed young writers like Goethe, he broadcast his vision of a “republic of learning,” which found expression, among other places, in his metaphor of the “ Hain ” or “grove,” the German equivalent of the Greek Helicon . 32 This idea prompted a number of young writers at the University of Göttingen to form a circle called the Hainbund , where the natural and social sciences, literature, and the arts were discussed in equal measure.
    Though Lessing was interested in—and to an extent stimulated by—Gottsched and Klopstock, it was a less well-known figure, Christlob Mylius (1722–54), a cousin of Lessing’s, who introduced him to the theater. Lessing wrote a number of early plays though they were overshadowed, to begin with, by his hack (but often brilliant) journalism and the ambitious quarterly he inaugurated that dealt with the drama, as a result of which Lessing was offered a position as reviewer for the Berlinische privilegierte Zeitung (which later became the well-known Vossische Zeitung ). 33 He now had a regular income and abandoned playwriting to concentrate on criticism. In doing so, he formed a firm friendship with two other many-sided men, Friedrich Nicolai (bookseller, editor, publisher, writer, philosopher, satirist) and Moses Mendelssohn (philosopher, mathematician, critic—a man who even risked criticizing the poetry of Friedrich the Great), and all three began to be talked about in Berlin.
    Over the years, Lessing started, or had a hand in, no fewer than five periodicals, designed to raise the standard of German literature and rescue it from mediocrity. 34 He studied Winckelmann (disagreeing with many of his conclusions about Greek art), dipped into archaeology, and investigated what to him were the crucial differences between art and poetry. 35 In 1765, he was offered the chance to become a dramatist and consultant to a new theater company in Hamburg. This was nothing less than an attempt to create a national theater in Germany. It opened in April 1767, at which time Lessing published the first issue of his fourth periodical, Die Hamburgische Dramaturgie ( The Hamburg Dramaturgy ), the aim of which was to stimulate general interest in the theater. Lessing’s best-known advocacy in the Dramaturgy was that stories about those whose circumstances are nearest to our own move us most and that the presence of kings and princes on stage, though adding grandeur, removes an element of familiarity, making identification with the characters more difficult and therefore less affecting. 36
    Neither the theater at Hamburg nor the Dramaturgy was as successful as Lessing hoped. This setback was compounded when, on a trip to Italy to survey its antiquities, he met and married Eva König. In January 1778 she gave birth to a child who died within twenty-four hours, the mother herself dying five days later. 37 In the midst of his despair, Lessing found himself locked into one of the great fights of his life. The previous year, he had begun to publish in Zur Geschichte und Literatur ( To History and Literature ), his fifth periodical, excerpts from the manuscripts of Hermann Reimarus’s Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes ( Apologia for the Reasonable Worshippers of God ). Reimarus (1694–1768) was a respected Hamburg schoolteacher who, in his manuscript, argued that Jesus was “a noble-minded but imprudent agitator,” that the Resurrection was an invention of the disciples, and that, therefore, at root, Christianity is based on deceit. The problem with the manuscript was that although Lessing wanted to see it published, Reimarus only ever intended publication in a later, more tolerant time. The two men realized there would be reprisals if the book were published openly and so it was released in installments, anonymously. 38 And indeed,