"Geschichte der Deutschen Dichtung" was the first comprehensive history of German poetry in a connected form. The author represented the literary activity of Germany in its successive stages as it grew out of her political life, thus making political history the foil and basis of literary history. His judgment was sincere and independent, although his criticism often assumed a censorious and pedantic tone against the most prominent poets of Germany, for example Goethe, Schiller and Jean Paul. Notwithstanding this criticism, the German people, without allowing themselves to be misguided in their judgment regarding the merits of these poets, gratefully accepted his work as a national homage to the subject.