NICOLAI, n11e6-11, 'CHRISTI:WIT FRIEDRICH (1733-1811). A well-known German litt&rateur, born in Berlin. From 1752 he directed a pub lishing and bookselling establishment, which he made one of the largest in Berlin. Ile became (1754) a member of a literary circle which in cluded Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn, with the latter of whom he established at Berlin in 1757 the Bibliothck der schiinen Wissenschaften (con duc•ted from vol. v., 1700, by C. F. Weisse at Leipzig), designed as an independent critical journal. He also collaborated with Mendelssohn and Lessing (whose place was later taken by Thomas Abbt ) in the Briefc die ncueste far betr•effcnd (1761-67), a literary review pre sented as letters addressed to a supposititious of ficer. wounded in the Seven Years' War. Another periodical, the A Itgenicinc Deutsche Bibliothek (106 vols., 1765-91; with a continuation, in all 162 vols., 1805), he made known chiefly for its harshness and insipidity. A rationalist in phi
losophy, lie wrote Sebahlus Nothanker (1773), rather a heterodox monograph than the work of fiction it purported to lie, and bitterly attacked Kant, Fichte, and the critical school in general. He attempted to cast ridicule upon most of what was significant in the German literature of the time, for example, the work of Goethe and Schiller, who made spirited reply in the Xcnien, and that of G. A. Bfirger, against whose re vival of the ballad form lie directed his /r'egScr (Wegner A I manach col schiinerr, el:totem liblieherr Volckslicder (1777-7s; new ed. 1857). Yet in earlier critiques he worked etfree•tively toward the improvement of taste; and his _Inekdoten roil Friedrich 11. (17S8-92) is of permanent ldstori cal value. Consult Giickingk, icolnis Lcben lit tcrarischer Jgcblsss (Berlin, 1529). See also GERMAN LITERATURE.