Nicolai’s satirical novel ›Sebaldus Nothanker‹ (1773–1776) (The Life and Opinions of Sebaldus Nothanker), in which the author castigates religious, church, economic, social and cultural events and problems of the time from the perspective of rationalism, was very successful in literary circles up to around 1800 and received the approval of Bürger, Herder, Goethe among others due to its demand for fundamental religious freedom and freedom of thought. It was however criticized sharply by the pietists. Three further literary works by Nicolai are in the second volume of the set: the famous Werther parody, the almanac and the satire on Schiller’s Musenalmanach.weiterlesen