Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim

LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM

LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM

(1729–1781), German dramatist, critic, theologian, and most prominent proponent of the German Enlightenment. A son of the city's chief Lutheran pastor, Lessing was born in Kamenz in the Electorate of Saxony on 22 January 1729. After attending the local Latin school and the famous ducal school of St. Afra in Meissen, Lessing entered the University of Leipzig in 1746 in order to study theology. Having discovered his love for the theater, he left the university without a degree and, to the dismay of his father, started to make a living as a freelance writer and critic, moving back and forth between the cities of Leipzig, Berlin, Wittenberg, and Breslau.

Scholars emphasize Lessing's role in the development of German theater and drama and his aesthetic theory. His earliest tragedy, Miss Sara Sampson (1755), which foreshadowed his rise to literary prominence, constituted a shift from the prevalent French classicist models to an advocacy of Shakespeare and the English theater. Miss Sara Sampson can be called an early example of bourgeois tragedy. Lessing argued that the essence of tragedy—pity—depended on the depiction of human suffering and not on the social milieu of the protagonists. It was important, however, to create situations and characters with which the audience could identify.

This new concept is best exemplified in his last tragedy, Emilia Galotti (1772). The play is an indictment of an immoral prince who ruthlessly pursues his love interest, the virtuous bourgeois girl Emilia. Seeing no other way of defending his daughter, her father kills her in order to preserve her morality. The play shifts the focus from the court milieu of the heroic play into the private realm of the middle-class family. Later writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) equally acknowledged the play's success in depicting an emancipated bourgeoisie of the Enlightenment rebelling against the corruption of court society.

Lessing outlined his thoughts on theater and drama in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767–1769; Hamburg dramaturgy), which he wrote while serving as a theater critic at the German National Theater in Hamburg from 1767 to 1769. Despite the fact that the Hamburgische Dramaturgie is not a systematic work, it provides many insights into Lessing's thought. Its main concern is the critique of French classical drama and the reinterpretation of Aristotle's work on tragedy.

Lessing's interest in the classics reveals itself in his work on aesthetics. In his Laokoon: oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie (1766; Laocoon: or the limits of painting and poetry), Lessing emphasized the differences between the visual arts and literature. According to Lessing, literature focuses on action, whereas the visual arts focus on static objects. Lessing concluded that literature is superior to painting or sculpture because it can represent the full spectrum of human emotions.

With Lessing's acceptance of the post of ducal librarian at Wolfenbüttel in 1769, theological and religious themes emerged as the overriding concerns of his writings.

During his stay in Hamburg, Lessing had become a close friend of the children of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), a renowned Lutheran theologian and professor of Oriental languages at the academic gymnasium in Hamburg. Influenced by English deism, Reimarus had secretly written an attack on the veracity of revealed religion. After their father's death, Reimarus's children entrusted Lessing with the manuscript, from which Lessing published several parts under the title Fragmente eines Ungenannten (1774–1778; Fragments from an unnamed author). Most of the fragments criticized different parts of the Old and New Testament on moral as well as historical grounds. The publication created a stir in religious circles so that Lessing's employer, the duke of Brunswick, withdrew Lessing's censorship privileges. Forced to silence, Lessing wrote his most famous play, the epic poem Nathan der Weise (1779; Nathan the wise). Modern scholarship views the play essentially as a call for religious tolerance. By taking characters from the three major religious denominations, Lessing stressed his conviction that religious differences obscure the fact that all belief systems share a set of moral values. Lessing's last work, his Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780; The education of the human race) has often been viewed as his literary testament. The work addressed the theological issues raised during the Fragmente controversy and in Nathan der Weise, namely the problem of the relationship between reason and revelation. According to Lessing, religion is part of the process of the spiritual growth of mankind. Whereas ancient religions needed textual codification in order to provide human beings with guidance in their lives, eventually reason would free humankind of this necessity.

Lessing is justifiably regarded as one of the most distinguished representatives of the Enlightenment. His advocacy of basic humanitarian values such as tolerance illustrates that some proponents of the High Enlightenment not only debated their ideas and values behind the closed doors of the reading societies and salons, but also defended unpopular positions and values in public.

See also Drama: German ; Enlightenment ; German Literature and Language .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Emilia Galotti: A Tragedy in Five Acts. Translated by Edward Dvoretzky. New York, 1962.

——. Gesammelte Werke. Edited by Paul Rilla. Berlin, 1954–1958.

——. Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Translated by Edward Allen McCormick. Indianapolis, 1962.

——. Miss Sara Sampson: A Tragedy in Five Acts. Translated by G. Hoern Schlage. Stuttgart, 1977.

——. Nathan the Wise. Translated by Walter Frank Charles Ade. Woodbury, N.Y, 1972.

——. Sämtliche Schriften. Edited and revised by Karl Lachmann and Franz Muncker. 3rd ed. Stuttgart, 1886–1924. Reprinted Berlin, 1968.

——. Theological Writings: Selections in Translation with an Introduction. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Stanford, 1956.

Secondary Sources

Albrecht, Wolfgang. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Stuttgart, 1997.

Allison, Henry E. Lessing and the Enlightenment: His Philosophy of Religion and Its Relation to Eighteenth-Century Thought. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1966.

Batley, Edward M. Catalyst of Enlightenment, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Productive Criticism of Eighteenth-Century Germany. Bern, 1990.

Eckhart, Jo-Jacqueline. Lessing's Nathan the Wise and the Critics: 1779–1991. Columbia, S.C., 1993.

Engel, Eva, and Claus Ritterhoff, eds. Neues zur Lessing-Forschung. Ingrid Strohschneider-Kohrs zu Ehren am 26. August 1997. Tübingen, 1998.

Fick, Monika. Lessing-Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung. Stuttgart, 2000.

Lamport, F. J. Lessing and the Drama. Oxford, 1981.

Ugrinsky, Alexej, ed. Lessing and the Enlightenment. New York, 1986.

Yasukata, Toshimasa. Lessing's Philosophy of Religion and the German Enlightenment: Lessing on Christianity and Reason. Oxford, 2002.

Ulrich Groetsch