The study examines the beginnings of critical engagement with literary products in Germany. Unlike most studies of its kind it does not centre on reviews. Instead, it traces the development of the literary critique as a process in which the impetus for scholarly critical engagement draws upon literary models likely to be successful with the public. In the analyses conducted here, dialogue, apologia, and satire stand revealed as productive models with the help of which authors like Thomasius or Lessing flexed their critical muscles with sometimes scathing results and also charted out the specifically dialogic structure still typical of this kind of criticism.