Christoph Friedrich Nicolai

Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811) was a Berlin bookseller, critic and satirical novelist, the son of the founder of the Nicolaische Buchhandlung. After learning the bookselling trade in Frankfurt an der Oder from 1749, he returned to Berlin in 1752. With Lessing and Mendelssohn he edited the review journal Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend (1759–1765), followed by his own Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (1765–1792), the organ of the popular Enlightenment philosophers.

His novel The Joys of Young Werther (1775) parodied Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, giving its hero a happy ending. He died in Berlin in 1811.