1. Definition and background
Poets and writers became increasingly influential as critical thought-leaders during the early modern era, and they called increasingly urgently for individual and collective freedom. Lessing’s “thinking out loud with a friend” presented in Freimaurergesprächen (“Masonic Dialogues,” 1779) [2. 25]), Wieland’s call for “freedom of speech and of the press” (1788; Freedom of the press) in connection with his cosmopolitan world view [3. 198 ff…