Biography
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), born in Kamenz in Saxony, was the central figure of the German Enlightenment and arguably the most important dramatist, critic, and theorist in the formation of modern German literature. His early comedies culminated in the bourgeois tragedy Miß Sara Sampson (1755) and his first masterpiece Minna von Barnhelm (1767), the first genuinely great comedy in the German language. The domestic tragedy Emilia Galotti (1772) and the dramatic poem Nathan der Weise (1779) are the summits of his theatrical work. Nathan became the foundational text of German tolerance philosophy. Lessing's Laokoön (1766) transformed aesthetic theory, and his Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1769) established modern theatre criticism. As librarian at Wolfenbüttel from 1770, he found the manuscripts that would provoke the famous Fragments Controversy with Goeze. Lessing died in Braunschweig in 1781.
On Stagelog
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