Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Emilia Galotti

Tragedy portraying a woman's destruction through tyrannical male authority

About the author

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The founder of German classical drama, Lessing established a bourgeois realist theater in opposition to French neoclassical models. His criticism in Hamburg Dramaturgy was as influential as his plays. He championed religious tolerance and Enlightenment reason in works that still resonate.

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