Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (German: [lɛnts]; 23 January 1751 (O.S. 12 January 1751) – 4 June 1792 [O.S. 24 May 1792]) was a Baltic German writer of the Sturm und Drang movement.
Life
Lenz was born in Seßwegen (Cesvaine), Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire, now Latvia, the son of the pietistic minister Christian David Lenz (1720–1798), later General Superintendent of Livonia. When Lenz was nine, in 1760, the family moved to Dorpat, now Tartu, where his father had been offered a minister's post. His first published poem appeared when he was 15. From 1768 to 1770 he studied theology on a scholarship, first at Dorpat and then at Königsberg. While there, he attended lectures by Immanuel Kant, who encouraged him to read Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He began increasingly to follow his literary interests and to neglect theology. His first independent publication, the long poem Die Landplagen ("Torments of the Land") appeared in 1769. He also studied music, most likely with either the Ukrainian virtuoso lutanist Timofey Belogradsky, then resident in Königsberg, or his student Johann Friedrich Reichardt.
In 1771 Lenz abandoned his studies in Königsberg. Much against the will of his father, who on that account broke off contact with him, he took a position little better than that of a servant with the brothers Friedrich Georg von Kleist and Ernst Nikolaus von Kleist, barons from Courland who were about to begin their military service as officer cadets, whom he accompanied to Strasbourg. Once there, he came into contact with the actuary Johann Daniel Salzmann, around whom had formed the literary group of the Société de philosophie et de belles lettres. The young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who happened to be in Strasbourg, also frequented this group. Lenz became an acquaintance of Goethe and of Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling. Goethe now became Lenz's literary idol, and through Goethe Lenz made contact with Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Kaspar Lavater, with whom he corresponded.
