'ihrem Originale nachzudenken'

Lessing's translation work encompasses approximately 7,000 printed pages and more than forty titles, nearly as many authors, and various genres. Lessing translates from Latin, Italian, French, English, and Spanish.

Under his leadership, the question of translation became a subject of German literary criticism for the first time in the mid-18th century; Lessing is a key figure in an era when German literature begins to catch up with its European neighboring literatures. However, his significance as a translator has rarely been examined until now, possibly due to the still regrettable state of editions.

This volume supplements the contributions from a conference in Wolfenbüttel in the fall of 2007 with two additional essays. It addresses thematically and methodologically diverse aspects – from Lessing's translations of individual authors such as Diderot, Huarte, Hutcheson, Riccoboni, and St. Albine, Thomson, and Voltaire, to the question of his adaptation of Goldoni, and general inquiries into Lessing as a philologist, the theory and practice of his translations in the context of his engagement with Johann Nicolaus Meinhard, and his contribution to the development of the German vocabulary in relation to translations.