Preface and Danksagung

Statement of Purpose

Introduction: The German Aufklärung, the European Enlightenment, and G.E. Lessing’s Projects of Enlightenment: History, Culture, Politics, Philosophy, and Religion

Part I:
Historical-Cultural Dynamics of Lessing’s Life and Work

Lessing’s Pursuits 1
Lessing’s Erziehung and Bildung: The Pastor’s Son (Kamenz)
Meißen. The St. Afra Gymnasium
Leipzig. The University Student
Experimentation: The Beginnings of Lessing’s Projects of Enlightenment
The Poet
The Writer of Comedy 1
Berlin
The Critic
The Writer of Comedy 2
Samuel Henzi: The Fragment of a Trauerspiel and Politics.
The Comedies Revisited.
The Translator and Editor
Diderot and the Effects of Drama
Empfindsames Bürgerliches Trauerspiel.
Staging Enlightenment: Miß Sara Sampson
Tonsine and the Orient
Holland.
Frederick’s Seven Years War
Concerning Tragedy: The Briefwechsel with Mendelssohn, and Nicolai
Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend
Gambling with the Devil: The Faust-Fragment
The Seven Years War Revisited
The One-Act Play, Philotas, and the Fragments, Kleonis and Alcibiades in Persien
Kleonis Alcibiades in Persien
The Fables
Breslau
Gambling with Honor (Ehre): Minna von Barnhelm
Laokoon and Tragedy

Lessing’s Pursuits 2
Hamburg. The National Theater Project.
Nature and what is Natural
Poetry and History
Regarding Actors and Actresses, Painting and Performance
The Genius and the Critic
Genres
“Wir Deutschen”
The Turn from Corneille to Diderot
The Theater Critic as Gambler
Contemporary Reviews of the Hamburgische Dramaturgie.
Mitleid/Compassion
The Writer’s Reception by his Contemporaries.
Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet
Wolfenbüttel. The Library Project
Berengar of Tours
The Orientalist, Johann Jakob Reiske
Epigrams
Emilia Galotti: A Political Domestic Tragedy
The Reception of Emilia Galotti
Projects concerning Religion: The Reimarus Fragments,Their Reception, and the Goeze Affair
“Bildungsreise” Italy?
The “Notizbuch”
Final Years
Leben und leben lassen. Ein Projekt für Schriftsteller und Buchhändler
Educating the Human Race: Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts and Nathan der Weise
The Gambler on his Deathbed: The Final Days

Part II:
Intercultural Encounters. Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Melchior Goeze, and German Scholarship around 1900

1. The Heart of the German Enlightenment: Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn
The Correspondence between Mendelssohn and Lessing
Die Juden
J.R. Michaelis’s Criticism of Die Juden
Damon, oder die wahre Freundschaft
Moses Mendelssohn
Nathan der Weise .
Lessing, Mendelssohn and Jacobi on Spinoza.
The Correspondence Revisited
Friedrich Nicolai on Lessing and Mendelssohn.
The Friendship between Mendelssohn and Lessing

2. Signs of Silence and Lessing’s Polemics: Disputations on the Christian Religion
Gedanken über die Herrnhuter
Rettung des Hieronymus Cardano.
Ernst und Falk
Lessing contra Goeze
Goeze contra Lessing
Luther and Lessing’s Enlightenment
The Question of the Trinity.

3. Lessing 1900
Lessing between War and Peace
Women Writers
It had to do with Lessing
A Note on Spinoza at the Turn of the Century

Part III:
Transcultural Affinities. The European Enlightenment, World Citizenry, and Lessing’s Reception Today

Lessing, European Enlightenment, World Citizenry
Intellectual-Historical Contexts: The Search for Truth

René Descartes
John Locke
Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Adam Ferguson
A Republic of Letters

A Final Statement

Bibliography

Index.