The history of modern German drama begins with Lessing. However, he is regarded as an author who stands at a threshold, paving the way for the Classicists without walking it himself. Lessing is the ‘pre-classicist’ of German literature, praised and appropriated as a fighter for the nation and the bourgeoisie, for truth and tolerance. Robert Vellusig traces Lessing’s influence on German culture and literature, with all its misunderstandings, in contrast to his multifaceted oeuvre and portrays him as a pastor’s son turned poet, a genius of criticism, an intellectual well versed in public debates, and an outstanding representative of Enlightenment in the truest sense of the word.

This book is a translation of the original German edition Lessing und die Folgen by Robert Vellusig, published by J.B. Metzler, part of Springer Nature, in 2023. The translation was done by artificial intelligence (machine translation), revised by Sophie Hollwöger in collaboration with the author.