Even before his death in 1714, Johannes Riemer's contemporaries had extolled the poetic quality of his literary works. Erdmann Neumeister, for example, had described him as a "Vates utique eximius, et cui nunquam spiritus et anima Poeseos deficere videntur" (Excellent poet who always manifests the true spirit and soul of poetry in his works). Of his actual significance, however, they could have had but an inkling: through his introduction of innovative narrative structures and his consummate skill in realistically depicting a middle-class milieu, Riemer was able, if only for a short time, to elevate the "political" novel--a subgenre of the didactic novel introduced by Christian Weise--to new heights. The political novel was subsequently ignored by scholarship; in this critical wilderness, however, the lone voice of Arnold Hirsch was to ring out simply and eloquently when he observed in 1934: "Riemer führt durch seine Erzählungskunst den politischen...