Note 28 — Lecture VI. Free Thought In The Theology Of Germany From 1750-1835.

The materials for understanding the awakening of literary tastes in the last century in Germany, through Lessing's influence, are furnished by Schlosser, History of the Eighteenth Century. See vol. i. ch. iii. E. T. for the period from the Pietists to Lessing; and ch. v. in reference to the Deutsche Bibliothek, and also vol. ii. ch. ii. § 3. See also Vilmar's History of German Literature (translated and abridged by Metcalfe).

It may facilitate clearness to name the classification of schools of German poetry and taste, which is given in the last-named work. They are divided into five classes: viz. I. that which was antecedent to Lessing, which is subdivided into (1) the Saxon school of Gottsched; and (2) the Swiss school of Bodmer, and of Wieland in his early manner; which was connected with the Gottingen school of Haller, Hagedorn, and Klopstock, together with the Stolbergs and Voss. II. Lessing, and writers influenced by him, such as (1) Kleist and the Prussian group; (2) Wieland in his second manner, and J. Paul Richter; (3) Kotzebue, who was a mixture of Wieland and Lessing. In these two periods Klopstock, Wieland, and Lessing, were the intellectual triumvirs. III. The “Sturm und Drang” period; the Weimar school with its second literary triumvirate, Herder, Goethe, Schiller. IV. The later schools: (1) the romantic, viz. the two Schlegels, Novalis, Tieck, Uhland, Fouqué; (2) the patriotic of the liberation wars, Arndt and Koerner. V. The modern school of disappointment and uneasy reaction against the absolute government, H. Heine and Grün.

It is an interesting psychological problem to trace the close analogy between the schools of poetical taste and the corresponding character in the contemporary criticism of ancient literature, the speculative philosophy, and the theology.