Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim

(1729–81)

   Dramatist and Theologian.

   Lessing was the son of a Lutheran pastor and was born in Saxony. He became a wellknown literary critic and playwright and was regarded as a leading figure of the German Enlightenment. A personal friend of the important Jewish scholar Moses Mendelssohn (on whom his dramatic poem Nathan der Weise was based), he did much to encourage the integration of Jewish intellectuals into the cultural life of Germany. In his study of the Gospel origins, he argued for there having been an Aramaic original behind the Gospel of matthew which was also known by luke and mark. In his Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlects, he argued that Christianity could not be regarded as an historical religion, but that its truth could only be discovered through personal experience and objective enquiry. He became the centre of controversy when he published the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, extracts from the writings of reimarus which argued that the disciples had invented the story of Jesus’s resurrection in order to explain why his prophecies on the immediate arrival of the Kingdom of God had not been fulfilled. Lessing himself took a neutral position, but the controversy itself opened the door to disinterested investigations of the origins of the Christian faith.

   H.E. Allison, Lessing and the Enlightenment (1966);

   H.B. Garland, Lessing: The Founder of Modern German Literature, 2^nd edn (1962).