Mendelssohn told him that he wrote with too much facility; Goethe reported that everyone liked him and enthusiastically enjoyed his plays. What they and others disregarded was his importance, in hindsight, as a children’s author and writer of popular lyrics. Lessing and he were close friends as students, scrounging for a living, and translating plays. Klopstock was another student friend. Hiller collaborated with him on a number of light operas (they more or less invented German singspiel). Wieland and Jean Paul visited him; he also got acquainted with Rousseau and Voltaire when he was in Paris.