Johann Gottfried Herder studied under Kant at Königsberg. Another major influence was Goethe, who in 1776 helped him to obtain the post of court chaplain to Weimar, which led to his appointment as head of the Lutheran state church of the duchy. He wrote several significant works. His treatise on language, Abhandlung ber den Ursprung der Sprache (1772) is listed in Printing and the Mind of Man. But Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit  (the original German version of this book) is generally considered his masterpiece. "Notwithstanding his important contributions to other fields, it is for his philosophy of history that Herder is chiefly known and remembered today... [The present work] is a curious and in some ways contradictory work. On one hand, it reflects certain dominant Enlightenment interests; theological and progressivist notions of historical development appear in it, and Herder showed respect for such humanistic ideals as freedom and social improvement. At the same time its chief interest lies precisely in the manner in which it departs from various prevailing trends of Enlightenment thought. Not only does it exhibit a range and erudition that, considering the period of writing, is astonishing... it is also packed with original and imaginative suggestions for the reinterpretation of the human past and contains a great deal of trenchant criticism of the historiography of the time... Herder's conception of history exercised an important influence upon the course taken by subsequent historiography. Furthermore, some of his ideas are to be found, reformulated and elaborated, in later speculative systems and theories of the kind propounded by Hegel and Oswald Spengler..." (Patrick Gardner in Encyclopedia of Philosophy)