Johann Anton Leisewitz's place in literary history is secured by a single drama, Julius von Tarent (1776; translated as Julius of Tarentum , 1800), which was published when he was twenty-four. Since the play did not win first prize in a competition to which it was submitted, Leisewitz considered it a failure. Ironically, Julius von Tarent was far more popular on the German stage than Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's prizewinning play, Die Zwillinge (The Twins). Both plays centered on fratricide; in its emotional intensity Klinger's play was paradigmatic for the Sturm und Drang literary movement, whereas the tone of Leisewitz's work was more temperate and hence more acceptable to the mainstream theater. The unique balance between Enlightenment "reasonableness" and Sturm-und-Drang rebellion in Julius von Tarent constitutes its historic importance: it is a transitional work that pits the Weltanschauungen of two epochs against each other, maintaining that each position is destined to collapse...