Göttinger Hainbund

The Göttinger Hainbund ("Grove League of Göttingen") was a German literary group in the late 18th century, nature-loving and classified as part of the Sturm und Drang movement.

The members knew one other through their presence at the University of Göttingen or through their contributions to the Göttinger Musenalmanach, a literary annual founded by Heinrich Christian Boie in 1770.

Their evident delight in wilderness and untamed Nature (as a counterweight to the rationalism of the Enlightenment) is what scholars use to connect them to Sturm und Drang, although not all commentators agree on who influenced whom, and in what way.

On 2 July 1773, they celebrated Klopstock's birthday: Wieland was untroubled and responded generously, referring to the members of the Hainbund, in a letter to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, as "well-meaning" youngsters without experience of the world.

The Poet condemns the "voice of coarse Nature", but the Barde wins by emphasizing the closer spiritual connection he holds with the living German, and the Dichter exclaims: Another father figure (although not a member) was Gottfried August Bürger.