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Hello, reflecting on the literature of his time, the late 18th century satirist, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg wrote,

if another and later species comes to reconstruct the human being from the evidence of our sentimental writings, they'll conclude man to have been a heart with testicles, that is passionate and male.

This criticism was also a less than flattering reference to one of the most significant intellectual movements of the 18th century.

In the 1770s, a group of German artists, Muslim young men, wrote a series of daring works which shocked and delighted audiences at home and abroad.

Their books and plays favoured emotion, royal emotion over reason, personal liberty over morality.

The hero and figurehead was Gerser. For the tempestuous nature of their work, this movement became known as the storm unto drang, or English storm and stress.

With me, to discuss storm and drang are Tim Blanning, emeritus professor of modern European history at Cambridge University, Susanna Cord, professor of German at University College London, and Micah Ergel, associate professor of German at the University of Nottingham.

Tim Blanning, before we go into more detail, can we just establish what's exactly meant by storm and drang, who's involved, how long did last, why has it called that?

OK, well, a storm and drang is usually translated as storm and stress as you said in your introduction.

That's not actually quite right. I think I've got two native German speakers here who can correct me if I'm wrong, but a storm for storm is fine.

But drang really means urge or a strong desire. So there's a more sexual element, I think, in the German than there is in the English. It's not so much stress as an urge.

As you quite rightly said in your introduction, it's a movement of the 1770s. It's quite short-lived. We're going to argue, I expect about when we date it from, but 1770s a good starting point.

When it ends depends on how many people you include. If you include the young Schiller, which I will be inclined to do, then that takes us into the 1780s, but it's really running out of steam by the late 1770s, I think it's fair to say, but it's influence on contemporaries and on what was to come was colossal.

Not least because at least two really very important intellectual figures were involved. That's a good and harder, and as I indicated, if one includes Schiller, then that makes three.

There are several other really quite important figures as well, like Lens, the author of the tutor.

And what it's about, I think, is prioritising putting at the centre emotions, violence, self-determination, energy, action, all those concepts come up again and again.

What was the dominant school of thought in 18th century Germany before they came along, roughly before the 1770s?

As they saw it, at least, what they were reacting against. And of course, as with all movements of this kind, which are self-consciously revisionist and rebellious, they create something of an answer.

But what they're reacting against is the rationalism of the Enlightenment, especially a rationalism of the French Enlightenment.

Because there is a strong xenophob, not francophob, nationalist element in storm and stress, I expect we're going to argue about that, but for my money, it's well in there from the start.

So they're really reacting against what they see as an excessively rationalist Enlightenment.

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