Scherer[9] says that the pronunciamento of the new national movement in
German letters was the "small, badly printed anonymous book" entitled
"Von Deutscher Art und Kunst, einige fliegende Blätter" ("Some Loose
Leaves about German Style and Art"), which appeared in 1773 and contained
essays by Justus Möser, who "upheld the liberty of the ancient Germans as
a vanished ideal"; by Johann Gottfried Herder, who "celebrated the merits
of popular song, advocated a collection of the German _Volkslieder_,
extolled the greatness of Shakspere, and prophesied the advent of a
German Shakspere"; and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who praised the Strassburg
Minster and Gothic architecture[10] in general, and "asserted that art,
to be true, must be characteristic. The reform, or revolution, which
this little volume announced was connected with hostility to France, and
with a friendly attitude toward England. . . This great movement was, in
fact, a revulsion from the spirit of Voltaire to that of Rousseau, from
the artificiality of society to the simplicity of nature, from doubt and
rationalism to feeling and faith, from _a priori_ notions[11] to history,
from hard and fast aesthetic rules to the freedom of genius. Goethe's
'Götz' was the first revolutionary symptom which really attracted much
attention, but the 'Fly-sheets on German Style and Art' preceded the
publication of 'Götz,' as a kind of programme or manifesto." Even
Wieland, the mocking and French-minded, the man of consummate
talent but shallow genius, the representative of the _Aufklärung_
(_Éclaircissement_, Illumination) was carried away by this new stream of
tendency, and saddled his hoppogriff for a ride _ins alte romantische
Land_. He availed himself of the new "Library of Romance" which Count
Tressan began publishing in France in 1775, studied Hans Sachs and
Hartmann von Aue, experiments with Old German meters, and enriched his
vocabulary from Old German sources. He poetized popular fairy tales,
chivalry stories, and motives from the Arthurian epos, such as "Gandalin"