As before the Reformation, so at the turn of the century, it is the preachers and religious, metaphysical, or pietistic thinkers who give the first promise of intellectual revival. With the pietists Spener (1635-1705) and August Her mann Franke (1663-1727) comes Leibnitz (1646 1716), the brilliantly original philosopher, who indeed wrote little in German, finding French or Latin more to his purpose. More prosaic was his disciple Wolf (1679-1754), who wrote in German, and the popularizer Thamasius (1655 1728), editor of the first German magazine and commendable for his successful agitation against the juridical persecution of witch craft. Meantime Nature was timidly reassert ing her rights in poetry in the epigrams (1697) of Wernicke, and the lyrics of Gunther (1695 1723), while Brookes (1680-1747) directed the attention of his countrymen from the French to the English poets by precept and by example. He translated Thomson's Seasons. A revival of classical studies may also be noted, but it is to England that the literary youth of Germany is looking at the close of this Fifth Period.
Strut PERIOD. From the Messias to the death of Goethe (1748-1832). The reign of Frederick II. represents a progress in German letters and [esthetic taste that is hardly paralleled in history. When he came to the throne (1740) Herder (1744-1803), Goethe (1749-1832), Schiller (1759 1805), and Richter (1763-1825) were not yet born, Wieland (1733-1813) was a child of seven, Lessing (1729-81) a boy of eleven, Klopstock (1724-1803) a youth of sixteen, Gellert (1715 69) adolescent at twenty-five. When he died (1786) Lessing had closed his epoch-making career, Wieland, Herder, and Klopstock had passed their zenith, Goethe had completed the first period of his unchallenged mastery, and Schiller was becoming his worthy compeer. Here as in the Third Period a revival of national pride led to a revival of national literature. The Seven Years' War made Prussia a rallying-point of German national feeling, such as had not ex isted for centuries.
Noteworthy poets contemporary with the youth of Klopstock are the descriptive, didactic, and scientific Haller (1708.77), and the genial narrative and lyric verse-writer Hagedorn (1718-54). The Leipzig school of criticism led by Gottsched (1700-66) continued its con servative protest alike against the Anglophile school of Zurich, headed by Bodmer (1698-1783) and Breitinger (1701.76). and the amiable and popular Gellert (1715-69), chief representative of the younger writers of Leipzig. Nameworthy among the forerunners of the classical period are the satirist Rahener (1714-71), the epigrammatist Klistner (1719-1800), the essayist Cramer (1752 1807), imitator of Steele, and C. F. Weisse (1726-1804), first to make successful literary ap peal to German youth and childhood.
The new literary life is first fully felt in Gleim's Lieder eines preussischen Grenadiers (1758). Associated with Gleim in
what is known as the Halle School were Uz (1720-96) and Glitz (1721-81) ; the literary con nection with these of the poet of nature, Ewald von Kleist (1715-59), of Ramler (1725-98), a martial lyrist, of Holtz (1748-76), and of the idyllist Gessner (1730-87), is less intimate. The religious lyric tradition is meantime continued by von Zinzendorf (1700-60).
Klopstock meantime gave copious utterance to the subjectivity and sentimentalism of his gen eration, but did more for poetic technique than for public taste. Even his patriotic dramas and songs had value chiefly as examples and sugges tions to Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811). The whole tendency of Frederick's influence, direct and indirect, was to turn away from sentimental enthusiasm and pietistic mysticism toward real istic study and practical activity. This appears strikingly in the popular philosophic movement, which derives in part from the French encyclo pudists, but more from Shaftesbury and Locke. Its leaders were Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) and Friedrich Nicolai (1733-1811), both of Ber lin, with whom it is convenient to associate Thomas Abbt (1738-66), Georg Sulzer (1702 79), and Johann Engel (1741-1802). Among the popular historians Moser (1720-94) deserves note, and in criticism Johann Winckelmann (1717-68) and Christian Gottlieb Heyne (1729 1812).
All these belong in their cast of mind to the forerunners of the classical generation. The full force of the inspiration and emancipation that came from the triumphs of Frederick 1I. to the German literature that he affected to despise first appears clearly in the development of-the genius of Wieland (1733-1813), who in educating Duke Karl August of Weimar gave the new literature a genial home and kindly fostering. Meantime the sterner spirit of Lessing was breaking down and building up in testhetics the drama, philos ophy, and religion. The authors and scholars of Weimar and the neighboring Jena entered into his labors through Herder (1744-1803), while the young Goethe brought hither the fresh sap of the spring-tide of storm and stress to be clarified and strengthened before it was itself revivified by Italian naturalism. But the effervescence is in no way confined to Weimar or to Lessing and Goethe. One feels it seething in the young Schiller, in Lenz (1751-92), Burger (1747-94), Klinger (1752-1831), Wagner (1769-1812), Leise witz (1752-1806), and in the multitude who thought themselves geniuses of a Geniezeit. Of cardinal importance to the writers and the aesthetics of the succeeding decade was Kant by his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), who, as well as his successors, Fichte (1762-1814), Schelling (1775-1854), Hegel (1770 1831), rivaled the writers of imaginative litera ture in their claim on the attention of all serious minds.