Die deutschen Kleinstädter (1803), still available in Reclam’s Universal Library, is considered to be an icon of the German bourgeois mentality of the 19th century. August von Kotzebue originally adapted Louis Benoit Picard’s comedy La petite ville (1801), and then subsequently related the theme to the German situation – as Madame de Stael puts it in De l’Allemagne (1813). The following paper discusses this popular piece in the context of the aesthetic controversies between the Enlightenment in Berlin, Early Romanticism in Jena and Classicism in Weimar. There may even be some satirical jibes directed at Kotzebue’s home town of Weimar embedded in the drama, even though „Krahwinkel“, as the small town is called here, depicts the atmosphere of German provincialism in general. Goethe’s radical cuts in the piece made its premiere in Weimar impossible, and fuelled furthermore an enduring animosity, which culminated in Goethe’s disconcerting satisfaction in the face of the politically motivated murder of Kotzebue in 1819.