The German philosopher, dramatist, and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) was one of the most brilliant representatives of the German Enlightenment and stood on the threshold of the Sturm und Drang, or Storm and Stress, movement.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the son of a parson, was born on Jan. 22, 1729, in Kamenz in der Oberlausitz near Dresden, Saxony. After early education at the Fürstenschule St. Afra in Meissen, he attended the University of Leipzig from 1746 to 1748. This "little Paris" of 18th-century Germany was the stronghold of Johann Christoph Gottsched.

Early Works

In 1748 Frau Caroline Neuber's company performed Lessing's Der junge Gelehrte, a comedy about a haughty, pedantic young scholar, composed in the French manner and, to a degree, autobiographical, as Lessing himself was in danger of becoming a bookworm. From 1749 he was a feuilletonist and critic in Berlin; his friends and acquaintances included Karl Wilhelm Ramler, Christoph Nicolai...