Göttinger Hain

Göttinger Hain, a literary association of the German “sentimentality” era (1740–80), credited with the reawakening of themes of nature, friendship, and love in the German lyric and popular national poetry.

Members were the young poets—mostly students at the University of Göttingen—H.C. Boie, J.H. Voss, Ludwig Hölty, J.F. Hahn, K.F. Cramer, the brothers Friedrich Leopold Stolberg and Christian Stolberg, and J.A. Leisewitz. Founded in 1772, the group took its name from Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s ode Der Hügel und der Hain (“The Hill and the Grove”), in which the grove is metaphorically the abode of the German bards, vis-à-vis the hill as home of the Greek Parnassians, an opposition that the Hain felt aptly symbolized their poetic goals. The Göttinger Musenalmanach (“Göttingen Muses Journal”), published from 1770, became the literary organ for the circle and the archetype for many similar German literary journals.

The poets of the Göttinger Hain shared a desire to release poetry from the confines of the rationalism of the Enlightenment and from social convention; they attempted to make poetry free from foreign, especially French, examples. They idealized Klopstock and attempted to embody in their work a dynamic enthusiasm for the spirit in his poetry. Their ideals were patriotic, religious, and ethical. The group disbanded after 1774.