Lessing - German Playwright

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, German dramatist, critic, and of the Enlightenment in German literature was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
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In its four essays he aimed to defend independent thinkers such as the Reformation-period writers Johannes Cochlaeus and Gerolamo Cardano , who had been unjustly slandered and persecuted.

From this point on, Lessing was justly feared as a literary adversary who used his command of style as a finely honed weapon. The philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the writer and publisher C. Tragedy, Lessing maintained, should not preach morality but rather should arouse admiration and pity in the audience as evidence of emotional involvement.

Lessing's Philosophy of Religion and the German Enlightenment

The central point of these was a vigorous attack on the influential theatre critic J. Gottsched for his advocacy of a theatre modeled on French drama, especially that of the 17th-century tragedian Pierre Corneille. Lessing maintained that the courtly, mannered drama of France was alien to the German mentality. Instead, he demanded a truly national drama, belonging to the people, based on faithfulness to nature and reality. He urged German playwrights to take Shakespeare as their model. In the 17th Literaturbrief he published a stirring scene from his own fragmentary Faust drama.

He thus paved the way for his young contemporary Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his great dramatic version of the Faust story. In Lessing published some masterly prose fables , largely social criticism, and with them an essay on the fable form itself, in which he formulated the particular laws of the genre by analyzing its didactic and allegorical structure. In Lessing went to Breslau as secretary to General Tauentzien, the military governor of Silesia. One is the great treatise Laokoon: In the Laokoon Lessing attempted to fundamentally define the separate functions of painting and of poetry.

He pointed out that whereas painting is bound to observe spatial proximity—and must, therefore, select and render the seminal and most expressive moment in a chain of events—poetry has the task of depicting an event organically and in its temporal sequence.


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The essence of poetry thus lies not in description but in the representation of the transitory, of movement. The second great Breslau work is Minna von Barnhelm , which marks the birth of classical German comedy. The central characters are a Prussian officer, Major Tellheim, and a young gentlewoman from Thuringia, Minna.

She resolves the conflict between the claims of conscience and those of happiness. The two protagonists are supported by forcefully drawn secondary characters. Lessing then accepted the offer of some Hamburg merchants to act as adviser and critic in their privately funded venture of a national theatre. Within a year, however, the project collapsed, and Lessing recognized with some bitterness that the time for a German national theatre was not yet ripe.

Even so, his reviews of more than 50 performances were published, in the form of brief essays on basic principles of the drama, under the title of Hamburgische Dramaturgie — His years there were unhappy and tempestuous but rich in achievement. His tragedy Emilia Galotti was performed in Written in intense and incisive prose, this brilliantly constructed play deals with a conflict of conscience at the court of an Italian prince.

Lessing became involved in perhaps the most bitter controversy of his career when he also published extracts containing extremely radical ideas from the papers of the recently deceased biblical critic and scholar H. Theologians viewed these publications as a serious challenge to religious orthodoxy, even though Lessing himself had taken up a mediating position toward the radical theses of Reimarus, who had rejected the basic tenets of the Christian faith.

Lessing went into battle against the orthodox clergy, involving himself in violent controversies with their leader, the chief pastor of Hamburg, J. This is a didactic play of a theological and philosophical nature, combining ethical profundity with many comic touches, and is a work of high poetic quality and dramatic tension.

Education and first dramatic works.

The fact that the main characters discover in the end that they are blood relatives serves to underscore their common membership in the larger family of mankind. But his life there was otherwise full of tribulations. His health had begun to give way, and it was a lonely existence, with only a few trips to break the monotony. In December she gave birth to their only child, a son, but he died soon after; she herself died the following month. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles.

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Learn More in these related Britannica articles: Shakespeare spelled freedom from narrow conventions—the set verse form in couplets, the lofty language and…. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing pleaded for religious toleration on the basis of a common system of ethical values to which all men of goodwill could subscribe. Johann Gottfried Herder preached that the unique character and meaning of each culture contributed to the richness of common humanity…. Lessing was the first important Romantic critic. Novels, dialogues, and plays European cultural influence In history of Europe: Lessing's Hamburgische Dramaturgie ran critiques of plays that were performed in the Hamburg Theatre, but after dealing with dissatisfied actors and actresses, Lessing redirected his writings to more of an analysis on the proper uses of drama.

Lessing advocated the outline of drama in Aristotle's Poetics. He believed the French Academy had devalued the uses of drama through their neoclassical rules of form and separation of genres. His repeated opinions on this issue influenced theatre practitioners who began the movement of rejecting theatre rules known as Sturm und Drang "Storm and Stress".

He worked with many theatre groups e. In Hamburg he tried with others to set up the German National Theatre. Today his own works appear as prototypes of the later developed bourgeois German drama. His theoretical writings Laocoon and Hamburg Dramaturgy Hamburgische Dramaturgie set the standards for the discussion of aesthetic and literary theoretical principles. Lessing advocated that dramaturgs should carry their work out working directly with theatre companies rather than in isolation.

In his religious and philosophical writings he defended the faithful Christian's right for freedom of thought. He argued against the belief in revelation and the holding on to a literal interpretation of the Bible by the predominant orthodox doctrine through a problem later to be called Lessing's Ditch. Lessing outlined the concept of the religious "Proof of Power": How can miracles continue to be used as a base for Christianity when we have no proof of miracles?


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Historical truths which are in doubt cannot be used to prove metaphysical truths such as God's existence. As Lessing says it: In the final leg of his life, Lessing threw himself into an intense evaluation of theology and religion. He did much of his studying by reading manuscripts he found while working as a librarian.


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    8. While working for the Duke, he formed a close friendship with a family by the name of Reimarus. The family held an unpublished manuscript by Hermann Samuel Reimarus which attacked the historicity of Christian revelation.

    Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

    Despite discouragement from his brother, Karl, Lessing began publishing pieces of the manuscript in pamphlets known as Fragments from an Unnamed Author. The controversial pamphlets resulted in a heated debate between him and another theologian, Johann Melchior Goeze. In concern for tarnishing his reputation, Goeze requested the government put an end to the feud, and Lessing was silenced through a law that took away his freedom from censorship. In response, Lessing relied upon his skills as a playwright to write what is undoubtedly his most influential play, Nathan the Wise. In the play, Lessing set up tension between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity by having one character ask Nathan which religion was the most genuine.

    Nathan avoids the question by telling the parable of the three rings, which implies the idea that no specific religion is the "correct religion. Nathan the Wise is considered to be the first example of the German "literature of humanity". As a child of the Enlightenment he trusted in a "Christianity of Reason", which oriented itself by the spirit of religion.

    He believed that human reason initiated by criticism and dissent would develop, even without help by a divine revelation. In his writing The Education of Humankind Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts he extensively and coherently lays out his position. The idea of freedom for the theatre against the dominance of its French model; for religion from the church's dogma is his central theme throughout his life.

    Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim - Enlightenment Revolution

    Therefore, he also stood up for the liberation of the upcoming middle and upper class from the nobility making up their minds for them. In his own literary existence he also constantly strove for independence. But his ideal of a possible life as a free author was hard to keep up against the economic constraints he faced. His project of authors self-publishing their works, which he tried to accomplish in Hamburg with C. Lessing is important as a literary critic for his work Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry.

    In this work, he argues against the tendency to take Horace 's ut pictura poesis as painting, so poetry as prescriptive for literature. In other words, he objected to trying to write poetry using the same devices as one would in painting. Instead, poetry and painting each has its character the former is extended in time; the latter is extended in space.

    This is related to Lessing's turn from French classicism to Aristotelian mimesis , discussed above. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A Revolution in Theatre. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was the world's first officially appointed dramaturg. Lessing and the Drama. Walther Killy and Rudolf Vierhaus, Vol. Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon. Retrieved 12 September A Life in Music. Archived from the original on 14 March Soundings in the Dramaturgy of the Australian Theatre Director.