Although the Enlightenment, in Germany, had to share the eighteenth century with an opposing tendency which can be called in broad terms “Romantic,” we can reasonably say it enjoyed the ascendancy until the early 1770s. From that point on, it continued, into the first decade of the nineteenth century, to make a significant contribution to German literature and thought, through the work of writers of the older generation like Lessing and Wieland, and of others (most notably, for our purposes, Schiller) who certainly underwent a “pre-Romantic” phase (the so-called “Sturm und Drang”) but returned in part at least to the values of the Enlightenment during the period usually designated as “Classicism,” or “Weimarer Klassik.” We have, accordingly, subdivided this phase of our enquiry into two chapters. In what we defined as the era of “Aufklärung” (circa 1720–1770), the rationalism which is always rightly associated with the idea of the Enlightenment shows itself from its more timidly restrictive side. Like the later “Classicist,” the Aufklärer believes in the primacy of man. However, he is acutely aware that the “philosophical” truth of what he thinks or writes can be undermined by that of the emotions and the imagination, yet he puts his faith in the head rather than the heart. Truth, in history, is on the one hand the factual record, and on the other, an interpretation in the light of his own enlightened criteria, which he wishes to impose on past ages as well as his own.