Nicolai, Christian Friedrich (1733–1811)

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NICOLAI, CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH
(1733–1811)

Christian Friedrich Nicolai, a German publisher, editor, and author, was born in Berlin and studied there and at a Pietist institution in Halle, but he never attended a university. Nicolai spent three years as a business apprentice in Frankfurt an der Oder. Upon his father's death in 1752, he took over the family bookstore, managing it—except for a short period—until his death and expanding it into a very successful and lucrative publishing house. He became a close friend of G. E. Lessing and of Moses Mendelssohn, and was active in Berlin intellectual life. He edited the Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und freien Künste (Library of aesthetics and fine arts) from 1757 to 1758, the Literaturbriefe (Letters on literature) from 1759 to 1765, and the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (Universal German library) from 1765 on. The last-mentioned journal became the most famous German literary review of its time and was widely influential in theology as well.

Nicolai's own works, like those of many Enlightenment figures, were largely higher journalism consisting mainly in forceful and lively attacks on contemporary intellectual and literary personalities and trends. His Briefe, den jetzigen Zustand der Schönen Wissenschaften betreffend (Letters on the state of the arts; Berlin, 1755) were directed against the influential literary critic J. C. Gottsched. His philosophical novel Sebaldus Nothanker (3 vols., Berlin, 1773–1776) was an attack on certain reactionary circles in Halle. In various articles in his journals he attacked J. G. Hamann, Johann Caspar Lavater, Christian Garve, and others. He quarreled with J. G. Herder and F. H. Jacobi. The novels Daniel Säuberlich (Berlin, 1777–1778) and Die Freunden des jungen Werthers (Berlin, 1775) were parodies of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder, G. A. Bürger (author of the ballad Lenore ), and the Sturm und Drang. He attacked Catholicism as a source of superstition and Jesuitism; and, although he was himself a member of the Order of the Enlightened (Illuminaten ) and of the Freemasons, he accused both of being secret instruments of the Jesuits (which resulted in his forced resignation). In the philosophical novels Geschichte eines dicken Mannes (The story of a fat man; 2 vols., Berlin, 1794) and Sempronius Gundibert (Berlin, 1798) and in other works, he accused Immanuel Kant and his school and Johann Gottlieb Fichte of being crypto-Catholics. His Vertraute Briefe von Adelheid B. an ihre Freundin Julie S. (Confidential letters from Adelaide B. to her friend Julie S.; Berlin, 1799) was directed against Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Nicolai wrote many other works, notably a large work devoted to the economic, cultural, social, and religious life in Germany and Switzerland, Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz im Jahre 1781 (Description of a journey through Germany and Switzerland in 1781; 12 vols., Berlin, 1783–1796). Although Nicolai was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Helmstedt Theological Seminary in 1799 and was made a corresponding member of the Academy of St. Petersburg in 1804, his hostility toward the most influential persons of his time and his lack of understanding of the new critical philosophy and of romanticism led to a negative evaluation of his work by his leading contemporaries and by the following generation.

Nevertheless, Nicolai was one of the most typical representatives of "popular philosophy." Basing his theories on common sense, he avoided abstract thought and complex speculation and favored useful and easy knowledge. He opposed orthodoxy, intolerance, enthusiasm, mysticism, and secret machinations. He attacked the scholastic Wolffian philosophy; the newer critical and idealistic philosophies; Protestantism, both orthodox and mystical, and Catholicism; secret societies; Gottsched's classicism in literature as well as the glorification of the peasant by J. H. Voss and Bürger; Sturm und Drang ; and early romanticism. He considered them all to be reactionary and pernicious, and his writings were full of misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and exaggerations.

His religious views incorporated his rejection of intellectualism, dogmatism, and mysticism. He held that religion and science should not be confused. Orthodox religion corrupted morality and tended toward an obnoxious hierarchical system. He denied original sin and eternal damnation and accepted the doctrines of free will and of the immortality of the soul. Religion should be based on the individual conscience and not on revelation—on common sense and not on enthusiasm.

According to Nicolai, religion and morality are not the same. Morality is based on social sense and experience; religion is a feeling for God's goodness and providence as mirrored in the goodness and beauty of the Creation. Although Nicolai was a deist himself, he did not believe that a purely natural religion would suffice for the common people, and therefore he refused to reject publicly the Christian tradition.

Nicolai was influenced in aesthetics by the classicists Nicolas Boileau and Jean Baptiste Dubos and by the Swiss critics J. J. Bodmer, J. J. Breitinger, and J. G. Sulzer. He tried to find a middle ground between the classical doctrine of the imitation of nature and the newer stress on the imagination. He opposed the classical ideal of literature as deduced from a set of rules, the sentimental school of literature, and the Sturm und Drang emphasis on intuitive genius. He held that poetry should be simple and reasonable and designed chiefly for moral improvement.