Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) was a German dramatist and critic of the Enlightenment, born in Kamenz. After study in Leipzig and journalism in Berlin, he served in Breslau from 1760, where he wrote Laocoön. From 1767 he was the Hamburg National Theatre's critic, pioneering dramaturgy, and in 1770 became librarian at Wolfenbüttel.

His feud with Pastor Goeze in 1778 brought a ban, to which he replied with Nathan the Wise (1779), whose ring parable pleads for tolerance among Judaism, Christianity and Islam; its hero was modelled on his friend Moses Mendelssohn. He died in Brunswick in 1781.