If one should ask who was the most widely read German philosopher of the first half of the eighteenth century, who the leading critic, who the major promoter of a German theater, who the compiler of the most widely used German grammar, who the foremost teacher of rhetoric, and who the academic champion of woman's rights, in each case the answer would be Johann Christoph Gottsched. Gottsched was also one of the principal editors of the time, the author of one of the most influential moral weeklies, a prominent teacher at the University of Leipzig, and a thoroughgoing German patriot. Nevertheless, today the average student of German literature and culture knows little more than Gottsched's name and probably dismisses him as a slightly ridiculous figure, without having read a line from his many works.

The reasons are, first, that Gottsched was pushed aside by a younger generation of...