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German Thought, from the Seven Years' War to Goethe's Death
German Thought from the Seven Years' War to Goethe's Death Author:Karl Hillebrand Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTTJKE III. THE SEEDS OP GEBMAN THOUGHT. (1760-1770) It was during, and shortly after, the Seven Years' War (1756 to 1763) that the first generation of ... more »the great founders of our national culture made their appearance. There are three generations, indeed, which followed each other at twenty years' distance, and which almost entirely did the great work of German culture, of which I have genera- tlOnS undertaken to trace the outlines in these shoit lectures. The first, born between 1715 and 1735, the generation of Klopstock, Wieland, Winc- kehnann, Kant. Mendelssohn, above all, Lessing, whose principal works were published between 1750 and 1770, when these men were from thirty to fifty years old. The second generation, born in the middle of the century, included Herder and Voss, Klinger and Burger, Goethe and Schiller, whose greatest and most fertile activity displayed itself equally during their full manhood, from 1770 to 1800. Finally, in the third generation, born be- , tween!760 and 1780, the most conspicuous names were those of the two Schlegels, the two Humboldts, Tieck, Ilahel, Schleiermacher, Niebuhr, Savigny and Schelling, whose followers acted more particularly in the first quarter of the present century. The two schools which, from 1825, to 185C, influenced the German mind most powerfully, the school of Hegeland that of Gervinus, only continued, developed, summed up, applied, or contradicted the main ideas of the three preceding great generations; they did not properly put forth and circulate new ideas. It was a manly and robust generation, the generation of Klopstock, Wieland, Lessiug, which was also that of Frederick, Winckelmann, and Kant. They almost all were born in the humblest stations of life, and fought their way through direst privation ; ...« less