Johann Anton Leisewitz

Johann Anton Leisewitz

Johann Anton Leisewitz (born 9 May 1752 in Hanover, died 10 September 1806 in Braunschweig) was a German lawyer and dramatic poet, and a central figure of the Sturm und Drang era. He is best known for his play Julius of Tarent (1776), that inspired Friedrich Schiller and is considered the forerunner of Schiller's quintessential Sturm und Drang work The Robbers (1781).

He went to Göttingen in 1770, and became a member of the circle of poets called Der Hainbund, which included Stolberg and Voss, and contributed two poems to the Göttinger Musenalmanach for 1775, both essentially dramatic and democratic in tone. In 1775, at Brunswick, and later at Berlin and Weimar, he met and soon counted among his friends Eschenburg, Moses Mendelssohn, Lessing, Nicolai, Herder, and Goethe. His single complete play, Julius of Tarent (1776), was written in Lessing's style and with much of the latter's dramatic technique. The play was a favorite of Friedrich Schiller, and was frequently acted in Germany. It also inspired Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, who was employed as playwright by Leisewitz' father-in-law Abel Seyler.

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