Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 1729-81
German writer

Born in Kamenz, Saxony, he studied theology at Leipzig (1746), then went on to Berlin, where his chief means of support was the Vossische Zeitung, to which he contributed criticisms. In 1751 he went to Wittenberg, took his Master's degree, and produced a series of Vindications of unjustly maligned or forgotten writers, such as Cardan and Lemnius. He returned to Berlin, and in 1755 produced his classic tragedy Miss Sara Sampson (1755). It was based on English rather than French models, and in his contributions to a new critical Berlin journal, 'Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend (1758, 'Letters Concerning the Latest Literature'), he protested against the dictatorship of French taste, combated the inflated pedantry of the Gottsched school, and extolled Shakespeare. His famous critical treatise defining the limits of poetry and the plastic arts, Laokoon; oder, �ber die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie (1766, Eng trans Laocoon; or, The Limits of Poetry and Painting, 1853), was written while he was secretary to the Governor of Breslau (Wroclaw, Poland). It was followed in 1767 by his major dramatic work, the comedy Minna von Barnhelm (Eng trans The Disbanded Officer, 1786). In 1769 he was appointed Wolfenb�ttel librarian by the Duke of Brunswick, and between 1774 and 1778 he published the Wolfenb�ttelsche Fragmente eines Ungenannten ('Anonymous Fragments from Wolfenb�ttel'), a rationalist attack on orthodox Christianity from the pen of the theologian Hermann Reimarus (1694-1768) which, universally attributed to Lessing, provoked a storm of refutations. The best of Lessing's counter-attacks were Anti-Goeze (1778) and the fine dramatic poem, Nathan der Weise (1779, Eng trans Nathan the Wise, 1868), a noble plea for toleration.

Bibliography: H B Garland, Lessing, founder of modern German criticism (1937)