Nikola Roßbach: Gotthelf Wilhelm Christoph Starke (1762-1830). Discovery of a great unknown

Gotthelf Wilhelm Christoph Starke (1762-1830), a poet and theologian from Anhalt-Bernburg, was considered a classic in his time. His paintings of domestic life and stories made him famous far beyond the borders of his homeland. Nevertheless, as a late Enlightenment philosopher and moralist, he soon fell into the shadows of literary history - in whose cone of light others, a select few, stood and still stand. As a contemporary of Goethe, Schiller and Kant, Starke is a remarkable phenomenon of forgotten greatness. It is worth rediscovering him.
The Bernburg scholar, who experienced the French Revolution from afar and Napoleon's foreign rule from close up, was a passionate classical philologist and translator, an ambitious and courageous teacher. As an Enlightenment theologian, he preached tolerance and advocated the Protestant union of Lutherans and Reformed. With his paintings, he created a narrative oeuvre translated into French, English, Dutch, Swedish and Russian that is unmistakable: as a configuration of concise characters and vivid narrative spaces, of firm values and subtle longings, of superficial morality and subtle humor. However, he not only wrote stories, but also poems and songs, sermons and speeches, school writings and treatises as well as dramatic scenes.
This book attempts to rescue Starke's life and work from the canonized oblivion and restore his place in literary history.

Further information on the book can be found here.