Sturm und Drang

The scholar Roy Pascal has called the Sturm und Drang movement “the first flowering of the greatest period of German literature.” Typified by fervent nationalistic sentiments, the evocation of passionate emotions, and the depiction of intensely individualistic characters, the works of such figures as Johann Gottfried von Herder, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, Friedrich Maximillian von Klinger, and above all Johann Wolfgang von Goethe develop an original conception of society, history, art, and nature.

The objective of the Stürmer und Dränger, as propounded in the critical writings of Herder and Goethe, was to assert the unique qualities of individuals, nations, and languages and proclaim the supremacy of the imagination as realized in the figure of the genius. Most scholars regard these...