Emilia Galotti

The bourgeois Emilia Galotti is on the verge of her wedding to Count Appiani when Prince Gonzaga falls in love with her. To prevent this marriage, which is also a love match, he and his servant Marinelli will stop at nothing, and Marinelli ambushes the couple on their way to the ceremony. While Appiani is fatally wounded in the struggle, Emilia and her mother are taken to Gonzaga's castle. However, Emilia would rather take her own life than succumb to the prince's seduction and lose her innocence. Yet, her father gets to her first and stabs his daughter.

In his drama completed in 1772, Lessing drew upon a legendary event recorded by Livy, in which the already engaged Roman woman Virginia was murdered by her father, who believed this was the only way to protect her from the advances of the Decemvir Appius Claudius. Besides contrasting different perceptions of love, "Emilia Galotti" is also a political piece: by resisting the prince's will, the bourgeois Galotti family rebels against the nobility and has morality on its side. Therefore, the play is also understood today as a drama of bourgeois emancipation.