Irritation, fascination, complication – contradictions in the German reception of Shaftesbury. The book was awarded the Ernst Reuter Prize. The question of the significance of Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713), the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, for the German 18th century is a key issue in Enlightenment studies. Traditional German studies answered it enthusiastically: it regarded Shaftesbury’s influence as central to the aesthetics of the Sturm und Drang and the Classical period. The sources, however, tell a different story. Shaftesbury’s actual impact lies in the Enlightenment. Mark-Georg Dehrmann describes the complications under which Shaftesbury became known to the German Enlightenment and how he nevertheless stimulated central debates of the 18th century. To this end, the disputes documented in the sources are examined comprehensively for the first time. The journal landscape, the relationship between theology and the Enlightenment, the development of Enlightenment poetics and criticism, the emergence of a modern concept of literature, and finally the topos of the Promethean creator-poet are among the topics covered. Leibniz, Gottsched, Spalding, Nicolai, Mendelssohn, Wieland and Herder are just some of the key figures whose engagement with Shaftesbury is meticulously reconstructed. Winner of the 2009 Gleim Literature Prize