In Strasbourg, authors like Goethe, Lenz, Wagner and Herder met in a literary group presenting and discussing each other’s literary drafts. Some of their literary texts, especially poems and excerpts from dramatic plays, were published in the magazine ‘Der Bürgerfreund’, edited in Strasbourg. So far, research has completely overlooked the fact that the neighbouring city of Colmar also had a literary magazine, ‘Der patriotische Elsasser’, which also published literary texts in a new style. The magazine only survived two years, but it contains extremely remarkable texts of high significance for German literary history. Among them are three dramatic texts by a still completely unknown author of the ‘Storm and Stress.’

In my research, I gathered historical material on literary journals in Strasbourg and Colmar and was able to identify the editors and some of the hitherto unknown unknown collaborators of the journal ‘Der patriotische Elsasser’. I also examined documents from the literary societies in Strasbourg and Colmar as well as documents from the local publishers and printers. With this research I have laid the foundation for a larger research project that I intend to develop and carry out in the future.