Eine bislang übersehene, erste Balanz der deutschen Dichter (1772)

In 1708, the French painter and art critic Roger de Piles published as an addition to his work Course de Peinture par Principes a Balance of painters which included 57 painters of his time, giving each of them marks from 0 to 18 for composition, drawing, colour and expression. This method was adopted by several critics in the 18^th century and applied to poetry, at first by the English poet and physician Mark Akenside (1746) and later followed by the German critics Friedrich Nicolai (1760) and Christian Heinrich Schmid (1767). The first known <Balance of German poets>, however, was published by Christian Nicolaus Naumann in 1772. He ranks 25 poets according to 39 criteria. The following essay presents a detailed analysis of this <Balance of German poets> in the context of the aesthetic discourses in the second half of the 18^th century.