In 1776 Friedrich Maximilian Klinger donned the blue coat, yellow waistcoat, and white hat with yellow trim prescribed by Johann Wolfgang Goethe as the costume of his sorrowful Werther and rode out to Langen to meet J. M. R. Lenz's coach as it approached Frankfurt. This flamboyant gesture, which underscored the first meeting of the two leading figures of the Sturm und Drang era, was typical of the irrepressible young Klinger. Not only as the author of the play which provided a name for the period but in his ebullience and overweaning enthusiasm as well, Klinger personified the "Genie" (genius) movement and, as its most gregarious representative, provided the major link between the Sturm und Drang writers and those of the Göttinger Hainbund. In ever-widening circles he met and befriended the members of Germany's youthful rebellion against the formal dicta of the Enlightenment: Lenz, Heinrich Leopold Wagner...