In Oct. 1755 Lessing settled in Leipzig with a view to play writing. He then started on a foreign tour as companion to Gottfried Winkler, a wealthy young merchant, but the travellers turned back at Amsterdam at the outbreak of the Seven Years' War. At this time Lessing began the study of mediaeval litera ture to which attention had been drawn by the Swiss critics, Bodmer and Breitinger, and wrote occasional criticisms for Nico lai's Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaf ten. In Leipzig Lessing saw much of Kleist, whose regiment was stationed there, and a warm affection sprang up between them. In 1758 Kleist's regiment being ordered to new quarters, Lessing returned to Berlin. Kleist was mortally wounded in 1759 at the battle of Kunersdorf.
In Berlin Lessing contributed to the Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend (1759-65), a series of critical essays—written in the form of letters to a wounded officer—on contemporary literature. He insisted especially on the necessity of truth to nature in the imaginative presentation of the facts of life, and in one letter he courageously asserted the superiority of Shakespeare to Corneille, Racine and Voltaire ; other notable essays were on Wieland and Klopstock, and he edited with Ramler a selection from the writ ings of F. von Logau, an epigrammatist of the 17th century, and introduced to the German public the Lieder eines preussiscijen Grenadiers, by J. W. L. Gleim. In 1759 he published Philotas, a prose tragedy in one act, and also a complete collection of his fables, preceded by an essay on the nature of the fable. The latter is one of his best essays on criticism, defining with perfect lucidity what is meant by "action" in works of the imagination, and dis tinguishing the action of the fable from that of the epic and the drama.
In I 76o Lessing went to Breslau, as secretary to General Tauent zien, governor of Breslau, and director of the mint. During the four years which Lessing spent in Breslau, he collected a large library, and, of ter the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, in 1763, he resumed more enthusiastically than ever his partially in terrupted studies. He investigated the early history of Christianity and penetrated more deeply than any contemporary thinker into the significance of Spinoza's philosophy. He also found time for the studies which were ultimately to appear in the volume entitled Laokoon, and in fresh spring mornings he sketched in a garden the plan of Minna von Barnhelm.
analysis the limitations of poetry and the plastic arts. His con clusions have not all been maintained by later writers on aesthet ics; indeed they have often been fiercely contradicted. But Les sing was a pioneer ; he indicated more decisively than any of his predecessors the fruitful principle that each art is subject to def inite conditions, and that it can accomplish great results only by limiting itself to its special function. The most valuable parts of the work are those which relate to poetry, of which he had a much more intimate knowledge than of sculpture and painting. His exposition of the methods of Homer and Sophocles is especially suggestive, and he may be said to have marked an epoch in the appreciation of these writers, and of Greek literature generally. The power of Minna von Barnhelm, Lessing's greatest drama, was also immediately recognized. Tellheim, the hero of the comedy, is an admirable study of a manly and sensitive soldier, with some what exaggerated ideas of conventional honour; and Minna, the heroine, is one of the brightest and most attractive figures in German classic comedy.
In 1767 Lessing settled in Hamburg, where he had been invited to take part in the establishment of a national theatre. At the same time he joined J. C. Bode (173o-93), in starting a printing establishment. The theatre, however, was soon closed, and the printing establishment failed, leaving behind it a heavy burden of debt. In despair, Lessing determined towards the end of his residence in Hamburg to quit Germany, believing that in Italy he might find congenial labour that would suffice for his wants. The Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767-68), Lessing's commentary on the performances of the National Theatre, is the first modern handbook of the dramatist's art. By his original interpretation of Aristotle's theory of tragedy, he delivered German dramatists from the yoke of the classic tragedy of France, and directed them to the Greek dramatists and to Shakespeare. Another result of Lessing's labours in Hamburg was the Antiquarische Briefe (1768), a series of masterly letters in answer to Christian Adolf Klotz (1738-71), a professor of the University of Halle, who, after flattering Lessing, had attacked him, and sought to establish a kind of intellectual despotism by means of critical journals which he directly or indirectly controlled. In connection with this con troversy Lessing wrote his brilliant little treatise, Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet (1769), contrasting the mediaeval representation of death as a skeleton with the Greek conception of death as the twin-brother of sleep.