[39] As Germany then existed, there
was no national feeling to inspire great themes, no standard of taste,
and no worthy models for imitation. There was, indeed, no lack of
literature on all subjects; Kant speaks sarcastically of "the deluge
of books with which our part of the world is inundated every year."
But the fatal defects of the poetry then produced was triviality and
the "wateriness" of its style. Yet it was during the years that Goethe
spent in Leipzig that there appeared a succession of works which mark
a new departure in German literature. In 1766 Herder, who was
subsequently to exercise such a profound influence over Goethe,
published his _Fragments on Modern German Literature_; in the same
year appeared Lessing's _Laokoon_, which, in Goethe's own words,
transported himself and his contemporaries "out of the region of
pitifully contracted views into the domain of emancipated thought";
and in 1767 Lessing's _Minna von Barnhelm_, Germany's "first national
drama." Greatly as Goethe was impressed by both of these works of
Lessing, however, he was not mature enough to profit by them[40]; and,
in point of fact, all the work, poems and plays, which he produced
during his Leipzig period, is solely inspired by the French models
which had so long dominated German literature.
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