Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, an author celebrated by his contemporaries but forgotten by posterity, narrates in his novel about the "magnanimous commander Arminius" and his wife Thussnelda (1689/90) the early German history during the time of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, primarily in a patriotic tone and in a narrative style that soon rendered this work as outdated. Upon closer examination, however, some Germans emerge as scholars and physicotheologians who gather in natural science societies to discuss the latest theories of the nascent natural sciences. While the then-valid biblical cosmogony, the Ptolemaic worldview, and Pliny's natural history are referenced, they are only cited to dismiss them with an air of intellectual superiority into the realm of legends and fables.