SOURCE: Duncan, Bruce. “Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz.” In Lovers, Parricides, and Highwaymen: Aspects of Sturm und Drang Drama, pp. 116-50. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 1999.

In the following essay, Duncan provides a biography of Lenz and an overview of his major works.

The world took little note when Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751-1792) died alone on a Moscow street. Few people still remembered the one-time enfant terrible of German letters, and those who did often assumed that he had passed on long before. One publication had in fact mistakenly announced his demise twelve years earlier.¹ Extremes of fame and oblivion have continued to characterize his reception ever since; periodically, movements like romanticism, Young Germany, naturalism and expressionism have championed his works, only to see him fall back again into the category of literary curiosity. Nevertheless, he has exerted a strong influence on German theater, especially in the twentieth...