Nicolai

Nicolai, CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH, author, bookseller, and publisher, was born 18th March 1733, at Berlin, where his father was also a bookseller. He early distinguished himself by a series of critical letters (1756), in which he exposed the errors of both Gottsched and Bodmer, then carrying on a controversy which was agitating the literary world of Germany. With Moses Mendelssohn he edited the Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften (1757–58), and contributed with Lessing to Briefe die neueste deutsche Literatur betreffend (1759–65). By this he was led to conceive the plan of the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (106 vols. 1765–92), a periodical which he edited for many years, and which contributed to the progress of literature and improvement of taste in Germany, but became ridiculous from the inability of its editor to appreciate the new spirit that was stirring in Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and others, with all of whom he was at feud. He wrote topographical works, satires, anecdotes of Frederick the Great, and an autobiography, in which he describes strange apparitions or obvious hallucinations by which he was visited. He died 8th January 1811.