Nikola Roßbach: Gotthelf Wilhelm Christoph Starke (1762-1830). Discovery of a great unknown

Gotthelf Wilhelm Christoph Starke (1762-1830), poet and theologian from Anhalt-Bernburg, was considered a classic in his time. His paintings from domestic life and stories made him famous far beyond the borders of his homeland. Nevertheless, as a late Enlightenment philosopher and moralist, he soon fell into the shadow of literary history - in whose cone of light other, select few stood and still stand. As a contemporary of Goethe, Schiller and Kant, Starke represents a remarkable phenomenon of forgotten greatness. It is worthwhile to rediscover him.
The Bernburg scholar, who experienced the French Revolution from afar and the Napoleonic foreign rule from close up, was a passionate classical philologist and translator, an ambitious and courageous teacher. As an Enlightenment theologian, he preached tolerance and advocated Protestant union of Lutherans and Reformed. With his paintings, he created a body of narrative work translated into French, English, Dutch, Swedish, and Russian that is unmistakable: as a configuration of concise characters and vivid narrative spaces, of fixed values and subtle yearnings, of superficial morality and enigmatic humor. He wrote not only stories, however, but also poems and songs, sermons and speeches, school pamphlets and treatises, and dramatic scenes.
This book makes an attempt to wrest Starke's life and work from canon-fixated oblivion and restore him to his place in literary history.

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