Johann Friedrich Cotta

Cotta published a who’s who of German romanticist authors (many of them becoming close friends), as well as some vigorously influential periodicals. Schiller and Goethe were particularly close to him (he effectively brought them together); but he was also good friends with the Humboldts, Herder, Tieck, Jean Paul, and the philosopher Schelling — all published by him. The Schlegels (and many of the above) contributed to his periodical ‘Horen’. Hegel, Fichte, Pestalozzi, Hölderlin, Kleist and Fouqué were also among his stable of influential writers, as were Platen and his nemesis Heine, whose lives in Sicily and Paris he helped subsidise.