LXXVI | The Göttingen Poetic Alliance
In the year 1772 a number of Göttingen youths formed a society for the cultivation of a vigorous Deutschtum in what they supposed to be the spirit of the forefathers. Klopstock was their hero, Wieland their aversion. They wrote songs, ballads, odes, idyls, elegies, etc., treating of freedom, virtue, love of country, the brave days of old; of nature and the seasons; of common folk and their employments. Their work accords with the general spirit of the ‘Storm and Stress,’ and here and there presages the romantic movement. Of the selections, Nos. 1, 4, 9 are by Count Friedrich Leopold Stolberg (1750-1819); Nos. 2, 5 by Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826); Nos. 3, 6, 10 by Ludwig Hölty (1748-1776); Nos. 7, 8 by Johann Martin Miller (1750-1814). See Kürschner’s Nationalliteratur, Vols. 49-50.