Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: His Life, Works, and Thought by H. B. Nisbet (review)

H.B. Nisbet’s monumental biography of G.E. Lessing—one of the most influential figures of the German and indeed of the European Enlightenment—has finally appeared in print for English-speaking audiences. This impressive monograph first became available in 2008 as a German translation by Karl S. Guthke. As the culmination of a lifetime of erudition, the book found immediate acclaim, winning the University of Münster’s Hamann Research Prize and the Einhard Prize for Biography. Nisbet has filled a long-standing gap in research with respect to a comprehensive study of Lessing’s life and work, and the sheer scale, breadth, and depth of his study are unparalleled in the entire pantheon of Lessing scholarship. The original manuscript has been reworked to reflect even the most recent developments in Lessing scholarship, which includes numerous references to the third edition of Monika Fick’s excellent Lessing-Handbuch (2010) throughout.

Nisbet’s prosopography (his prolixity consistently sends even the most learned reader happily scurrying to their OED) begins by connecting Lessing’s familial situation with his earliest poetic and dramatic efforts, where both the author and his works are always elaborately framed by Nisbet’s astonishing understanding of ever-shifting sociopolitical contexts. Descriptions of city fortifications and living conditions in the eighteenth century, buttressed by visual documents like engravings, portraits of important figures in Lessing’s life, and the occasional reproduction of an handwritten manuscript or letter, all combine to create a vivid narrative that is supplemented by a huge trove of historical scholarship. Nisbet clearly communicates how the effects of warfare, political developments, theological debates, philosophical discussions—from both within German-speaking lands and from the broader European context—relate to Lessing’s intellectual development. On top of all this, Nisbet demonstrates a solid command of European literature, which deeply enriches his close readings of Lessing’s well-known publications, his lesser-known texts and journalistic endeavors, and even unpublished fragments in Lessing’s oeuvre. Lessing’s efforts are related not only to preceding historical events and discourses, but also consistently reinscribed within German intellectual history. Noting that Lessing was never prone to effusive autobiographical outbursts conveying his inner emotional states, Nisbet relies on various sources in order to glean an understanding of how Lessing grappled with his constantly evolving projects and the many shifts in his life circumstances. Karl Gotthelf Lessing’s biography of his older brother, which was compiled and published shortly after G.E. Lessing’s death, remains an excellent source of more intimate biographic information. Nisbet also makes solid use of Lessing’s correspondences and those of his friends and contemporaries, drawing from Wolfgang Albrecht’s Lessing im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Briefe (2003) and Lessing. Gespräche, Begegnungen, Lebenszeugnisse (2005), Richard Daunicht’s Lessing im Gespräch (1971), along with five collected editions of Lessing’s works and correspondences, with the Sämtliche Schritften (1979), edited by K. Lachmann and F. Muncker, serving as his primary source.

Nisbet successfully provides a comprehensive biography of Lessing that incorporates scholarship from over two hundred years, and Lessing’s multifarious engagements as a poet, dramatist, feared literary critic, dramaturge, translator, theologian, philosopher, librarian, and philologist all find their due note. Great and celebrated achievements in Lessing’s career (e.g. Laokoon, Minna von Barnhelm, Emilia Galotti, Miss Sara Sampson, and Nathan der Weise) are thoroughly examined with respect to the contexts of their genesis, structured close readings, and informative performance/reception histories; however, Lessing’s life is never whitewashed by Nisbet. Clearly differentiating his project from previous biographies that sought to romantically portray Lessing’s life as a process of teleological development (Bildung), Nisbet notes the “compulsive antiquarianism which some of his friends deplored” (276), here in reference to Lessing’s uncompleted Sophocles project, which he conceived of as filling a gap left in Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique (1702). The manuscript contains “less than three pages of basic bibliographic...