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Sturm und Drang and Classicism
The great age of German literature began in the 18th cent. The classicist theories of Johann Christoph Gottsched aroused violent critical reactions, indirectly paving the way for Friedrich Klopstock and especially for Gotthold Lessing, the greatest preclassical critic and dramatist. The period known as Sturm und Drang embraced the works of Johann Hamann, Johann Gottfried von Herder, and Jakob Lenz.
The period also encompassed the early works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller. Goethe and Schiller were widely considered the greatest figures in the subsequent classical period, when artistic forms in general were characterized by restraint, lucidity, and balance (see classicism). Their cultural ideals, expressed in the novel of self-formation or Bildungsroman, were also spread by C. M. Wieland and Friedrich HOlderlin, the age's greatest German poet.
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