We do not know whether some of the young poets who took hold of the subject a short time after were instigated by this fragment of Lessing's, or whether they were moved by the awakening German Genius, who, just at that period, was beginning to return to his national sources for the quenching of his thirst. Between 1770 and 1780, Lenz and Maler Müller composed, the former his "Hoellenrichter," the latter his dramatized Life of Dr. Faustus. No more appropriate hero could have been found for the young "Kraft-Genies" of the "Sturm und Drang Periode" (Storm and Stress period) of German literature. Schreiber, Soden, Klinger, Schink, followed them, the last-named with several productions referring to the subject. In 1786, Goethe communicated to the world, for the first time, a fragment of that astonishing dramatic poem which has since been acknowledged, by the whole literary public, as his masterpiece, and the most remarkable monument of his great genius.[6] The whole first part of the tragedy, still under the name of a fragment, was not published before 1808. Since then Germany may be said to have been inundated by "Fausts" in every possible shape. Dramas by Nic. Voigt, K. Schoene, Benkowitz,--operas by Adolph Bäurle, J. von Voss, Bernard, (with music by Spohr,)--tales in verse and prose by Kamarack, Seybold, Gerle, and L. Bechstein,--and besides these, the productions of various anonymous writers, followed close upon each other in the course of the next twenty years. Chamisso's tragedy of "Faustus," "in one actus," in truth only a fragment, had already appeared in the "Musenalmanach" of 1804.