VOLUME XI SLICE VII Geoponici to Germany (part) (continued 5)

The High Franconian dialects, that is to say, east and south (or south-Rhenish) Franconian, which are separated broadly speaking by the river Neckar, comprise the language spoken in a part of Baden, the dialects of the Main valley from Würzburg upwards to Bamberg, the dialect of Nuremberg and probably of the Vogtland (Plauen) and Egerland. During the older historical period the principal difference between East and South Franconian consisted in the fact that initial Germanic d was retained in the latter dialect, while East Franconian shifted it to t. Both, like Bavarian and Alemannic, shift initial German p to the affricate pf.

Finally, the Bavarian-Austrian dialect is spoken throughout the greater part of the kingdom of Bavaria (i.e. east of the Lech and a fine drawn from the point where the Lech joins the Danube to the sources of the rivers Elster and Mulde, this being the East Franconian border-line), in Austria, western Bohemia, and in the German linguistic “islands” embedded in Hungary, in Gottschee and the Sette and Tredici Communi (cf. above).15

The Old High German Period

The language spoken during the Old High German period, that is to say, down to about the year 1050, is remarkable for the fulness and richness of its vowel-sounds in word-stems as well as in inflections. Cf. elilenti, Elend; luginari, Lügner; karkari, Kerker; menniskono slahta, Menschengeschlecht; herzono, Herzen (gen. pl.); furisto, vorderste; hartost, (am) härtesten; sibunzug, siebzig; ziohemes, (wir) ziehen; salbota, (er) salbte; gaworahtos, (du) wirktest, &c. Of the consonantal changes which took place during this period that of the spirant th (preserved only in English) to d (werthan, werdan; theob, deob) deserves mention. It spread from Upper Germany, where it is noticeable as early as the 8th century to Middle and finally, in the 11th and 12th centuries, to Low Germany. Further, the initial h in hl, hn, hr, hw (cf. hwer, wer; hreini, rein; hlahhan, lachen) and w in wr (wrecceo, Recke) disappeared, this change also starting in Upper Germany and spreading slowly north. The most important vowel-change is the so-called mutation (Umlaut),16 that is to say, the qualitative change of a vowel (except i) in a stem-syllable, owing to the influence of an i or j in the following syllable. This process commenced in the north where it seems to have been already fully developed in Low German as early as the 8th century. It is to be found, it may be noted, in Anglo-Saxon, as early as the 6th century. It gradually worked its way southwards to Middle and Upper Germany where, however, certain consonants seem to have protected the stem syllable from the influence of i in a following syllable. Cf., for instance, Modern High German drucken and drücken; glauben, kaufen, Haupt, words which in Middle German dialects show mutation. Orthographically, however, this process is, during the first period, only to be seen in the change of ă to e; from the 10th century onwards there are, it is true, some traces of other changes, and vowels like ŭ, ō, ou must have already been affected, otherwise we could not account for the mutation of these vowels at a period when the cause of it, the i or j, no longer existed. A no less important change, for it helped to differentiate High from Low German, was that of Germanic ē2 (a closed ē-sound) and ō diphthongs in Old High German, while they were retained in Old Low German. Cf. O.H.G. hēr, hear, hiar, O.L.G. hēr; O.H.G. fuoz, O.L.G. fōt. The final result was that in the 10th century ie (older forms, ia, ea) and uo (older ua, oa in Alemannic, ua in South Franconian) had asserted themselves throughout all the High German dialects. Again while in Old High German the older diphthongs ai and au were preserved as ei and ou, unless they happened to stand at the end of a word or were followed by certain consonants (h, w, r in the one case, and h, r, l, n, th, d, t, z, s in the other; cf. zēh from zīhan, zōh from ziohan, verlôs, &c.), the Old Low German shows throughout the monophthongs ē (in Middle Low German a closed sound) and ō (cf. O.L.G. stēn, ōga). These monophthongs are also to be heard in Rhenish Franconian, the greater part of East Franconian and the Upper Saxon and Silesian dialects of modern times (cf. Stein: Steen or Stan; laufen: lofen or lopen).

Of the dialects enumerated above, Bavarian and Alemannic, High and Rhenish Franconian as well as Old Saxon are more or less represented in the literature of the first period. But this literature, the chief monuments of which are Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch (in South Franconian), the Old Saxon Heliand (a life of Christ in alliterative verse), the translation of Tatian’s Gospel Harmony (East Franconian) and that of a theological tract by Bishop Isidore of Seville and of parts of the Bible (Rhenish Franconian), is almost exclusively theological and didactic in character. One is consequently inclined to attach more value to the scanty remains of the Hildebrandslied and some interesting and ancient charms. The didactic spirit again pervades the translations and commentaries of Notker of St Gall in the early part of the 11th century, as well as a paraphrase of the Song of Songs by an abbot Williram of Ebersberg a little later. Latin, however, reigned supreme throughout this period, it being the language of the charters, the lawbooks (there is nothing in Germany to compare with the laws of the Anglo-Saxons), of science, medicine, and even poetry. It is thus needless to say that there was no recognized literary language (Schriftsprache) during this period, nor even any attempt to form one; at most, we might speak of schools in the large monasteries, such as Reichenau, St Gall, Fulda, which contributed to the spread and acceptance of certain orthographical rules.

The Middle High German Period

The following are the chief changes in sounds and forms which mark the development of the language in the Middle High German period. The orthography of the MSS. reveals a much more extensive employment of mutation (Umlaut) than was the case in the first period; we find, for instance, as the mutation of o, ö, of ō, œ, of ū, iu (ü), of uo, üe, of ou, öu, and eu (cf. höler, bœse, hiuser, güete, böume), although many scribes, and more especially those of Middle and Low German districts, have no special signs for the mutation of ŭ, ū, and o. Of special interest is the so-called “later (or weaker) mutation” (jüngerer oder schwächerer Umlaut) of ă to a very open e sound, which is often written ä. Cf. mähte (O.H.G. mahti), mägede (O.H.G. magadi). The earlier mutation of this sound produced an e(é), a closed sound (i.e. nearer i). Cf. geste (O.H.G. gesti).

The various Old High German vowels in unstressed syllables were either weakened to an indifferent e sound (geben, O.H.G. geban; bote, O.H.G. boto; sige, O.H.G. sigu) or disappeared altogether. The latter phenomenon is to be observed after l and r, and partly after n and m (cf. ar(e), O.H.G. aro; zal, O.H.G. zala; wundern, O.H.G. wuntarōn, &c.); but it by no means took place everywhere in the same degree and at the same time. It has been already noted that the Alemannic dialect (as well as the archaic poets of the German national epic) retained at least the long unstressed vowels until as late as the 14th century (gemarterōt, gekriuzegōt, &c., and Low and Middle German preserved the weakened e sound in many cases where Upper German dropped it. In this period the beginnings are also to be seen in Low and Middle German (Heinrich von Veldeke shows the first traces of it) of a process which became of great importance for the formation of the Modern German literary language. This is the lengthening of originally short vowels in open syllables,17 for example, in Modern High German Tāges, Wēges, lōbe (Middle High German tăges, wĕges, lŏbe). In Austria, on the other hand, there began as far back as the first half of the 12th century another movement of equal importance for Modern High German, namely, the conversion of the long vowels, ī, ū, ü, into ei (ou), au, eu (äu).18 It is, therefore, in MSS. written in the south-east that we find forms like zeit, lauter (löter), heute, &c., for the first time. With the exception of Low German and Alemannic—Swabian, however, follows in this respect the majority—all the German dialects participated in this change between the 14th and 16th centuries, although not all to the same degree. The change was perhaps assisted by the influence of the literary language which had recognized the new sounds. In England the same process has led to the modern pronunciation of time, house, &c., and in Holland to that of tijd, huis, &c. F. Wrede (Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum xxxix. 257 ff.) has suggested that the explanation of the change is to be sought in the apocope and syncope of the final e, and the greater stress which was in consequence put on the stem-syllable. The tendency to a change in the opposite direction, namely, the narrowing of diphthongs to monophthongs, is to be noticed in Middle German dialects, i.e. in dialects which resisted the apocope of the final e, where ie, uo, üe become ī, ū, ü; thus we have for Brief, brīf, for huon, hūn, for brüeder, brüder, and this too was taken over into the Modern High German literary language.19

No consonantal change was so widespread during this period as that of initial s to sch before l, n, m, w, p and t. Cf. slingen, schlingen; swer (e) n, schwören, &c. The forms scht- and schp- are often to be met with in Alemannic MSS., but they were discarded again, although modern German recognizes the pronunciation schp, scht.20 With regard to changes affecting the inflections of verbs and nouns, it must suffice here to point out that the weakening or disappearance of vowels in unstressed syllables necessarily affected the characteristic endings of the older language; groups of verbs and substantives which in Old High German were distinct now become confused. This is best seen in the case of the weak verbs, where the three Old High German classes (cf. nerien, salbōn, dagēn) were fused into one. Similarly in the declensions we find an increasing tendency of certain forms to influence substantives belonging to other classes; there is, for instance, an increase in the number of neuter nouns taking -er (-ir) in the plural, and of those which show mutation in the plural on the model of the i- stems (O.H.G. gast, pl. gesti; cf. forms like ban, benne; hals, helse; wald, welde). Of changes in syntax the gradual decay in the use of the genitive case dependent on a noun or governed by a verb (cf. constructions like eine brünne rotes goldes, or des todes wünschen) towards the end of the period, and also the disappearance of the Old High German sequence of tenses ought at least to be mentioned.

In the Middle High German period, the first classical period of German poetry, the German language made great advances as a vehicle of literary expression; its power of expression was increased and it acquired a beauty of style hitherto unknown. This was the period of the Minnesang and the great popular and court epics, of Walther von der Vogelweide, Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg; it was a period when literature enjoyed the fostering care of the courts and the nobility. At the same time German prose celebrated its first triumphs in the sermons of Berthold von Regensburg, and in the mystic writings and sermons of Meister Eckhart, Tauler and others. History (Eike von Repkow’s Weltchronik) and law (Sachsenspiegel, Schwabenspiegel) no longer despised the vernacular, and from about the middle of the 13th century German becomes, in an ever-increasing percentage, the language of deeds and charters.

It has been a much debated question how far Germany in Middle High German times possessed or aspired to possess a Schriftsprache or literary language.21 About the year 1200 there was undoubtedly a marked tendency towards a unification of the literary language on the part of the more careful poets like Walther von der Vogelweide, Hartmann von Aue and Gottfried von Strassburg; they avoid, more particularly in their rhymes, dialectic peculiarities, such as the Bavarian dual forms es and enk, or the long vowels in unstressed syllables, retained in Alemannic, and they do not make use of archaic words or forms. We have thus a right to speak, if not of a Middle High German literary language in the widest sense of the word, at least of a Middle High German Dichtersprache or poetic language, on an Alemannic-Franconian basis. Whether, or in how far, this may have affected the ordinary speech of the nobility or courts, is a matter of conjecture; but it had an undeniable influence on Middle and Low German poets, who endeavoured at least to use High German forms in their rhymes. Attempts were also made in Low German districts, though at a later stage of this period, to unify the dialects and raise them to the level of an accepted literary language. It will be shown later why these attempts were unsuccessful. Unfortunately, however, the efforts of the High German poets to form a uniform language were also shortlived; by the end of the 13th century the Dichtersprache had disappeared, and the dialects again reigned supreme.

Modern High German

Although the Middle High German period had thus not succeeded in effecting any permanent advance in the direction of a uniform literary language, the desire for a certain degree of uniformity was never again entirely lost. At the close of the 13th century literature had passed from the hands of the nobility to those of the middle classes of the towns; the number of writers who used the German tongue rapidly increased; later the invention of printing, the increased efficiency of the schools, and above all the religious movement of the Reformation, contributed to awakening the desire of being understood by those who stood outside the dialectic community of the individual. A single authoritative form of writing and spelling was felt on all sides to be particularly necessary. This was found in the language used officially by the various chanceries (Kanzleien), and more especially the imperial chancery. Since the days of Charles IV. (1347-1378) the latter had striven after a certain uniform language in the documents it issued, and by the time of Maximilian I. (1493-1519) all its official documents were characterized by pretty much the same phonology, forms and vocabulary, in whatever part of Germany they originated. And under Maximilian’s successor, Charles V., the conditions remained pretty much the same. The fact that the seat of the imperial chancery had for a long time been in Prague, led to a mingling of Upper and Middle German sounds and inflections; but when the crown came with Frederick III. (1440-1493) to the Habsburgs, the Upper German elements were considerably increased. The chancery of the Saxon electorate, whose territory was exclusively Middle German, had to some extent, under the influence of the imperial chancery, allowed Upper German characteristics to influence its official language. This is clearly marked in the second half of the 15th century, and about the year 1500 there was no essential difference between the languages of the two chanceries. Thuringia, Silesia and Brandenburg soon followed suit, and even Low German could not ultimately resist the accepted High German notation (ö, ṏ, ü, ṻ, ů, ie, &c.). We have here very favourable conditions for the creation of a uniform literary language, and, as has already been said, the tendency to follow these authorities is clearly marked.

In the midst of this development arose the imposing figure of Luther, who, although by no means the originator of a common High German speech, helped very materially to establish it. He deliberately chose (cf. the often quoted passage in his Tischreden, ch. 69) the language of the Saxon chancery as the vehicle of his Bible translation and subsequently of his own writings. The differences between Luther’s usage and that of the chancery, in phonology and inflection, are small; still he shows, in his writings subsequent to 1524, a somewhat more pronounced tendency towards Middle German. But it is noteworthy that he, like the chancery, retained the old vowel-change in the singular and plural of the preterite of the strong verbs (i.e. steig, stigen; starb, sturben), although before Luther’s time the uniformity of the modern preterite had already begun to show itself here and there. The adoption of the language of the chancery gave rise to the mixed character of sounds and forms which is still a feature of the literary language of Germany. Thus the use of the monophthongs ī, ü, and ü, instead of the old diphthongs ie, uo and üe, comes from Middle Germany; the forms of the words and the gender of the nouns follow Middle rather than Upper German usage, whereas, on the other hand, the consonantal system (p to pf; d to t) betrays in its main features its Upper German (Bavarian-Austrian) origin.

The language of Luther no doubt shows greater originality in its style and vocabulary (cf. its influence on Goethe and the writers of the Sturm und Drang), for in this respect the chancery could obviously afford him but scanty help. His vocabulary is drawn to a great extent from his own native Middle German dialect, and the fact that, since the 14th century, Middle German literature (cf. for instance, the writings of the German mystics, at the time of and subsequent to Eckhart) had exercised a strong influence over Upper Germany, stood him in good stead. Luther is, therefore, strictly speaking, not the father of the modern German literary language, but he forms the most important link in a chain of development which began long before him, and did not reach its final stage until long after him. To infer that Luther’s language made any rapid conquest of Germany would not be correct. It was, of course, immediately acceptable to the eastern part of the Middle German district (Thuringia and Silesia), and it did not find any great difficulty in penetrating into Low Germany, at least into the towns and districts lying to the east of the Saale and Elbe (Magdeburg, Hamburg). One may say that about the middle of the 16th century Luther’s High German was the language of the chanceries, about 1600 the language of the pulpit (the last Bible in Low German was printed at Goslar in 1621) and the printing presses. Thus the aspirations of Low Germany to have a literary language of its own were at an early stage crushed. Protestant Switzerland, on the other hand, resisted the “uncommon new German” until well into the 17th century. It was also natural that the Catholic Lower Rhine (Cologne) and Catholic South Germany held out against it, for to adopt the language of the reformer would have seemed tantamount to offering a helping hand to Protestant ideas. At the same time, geographical and political conditions, as well as the pronounced character of the Upper German dialects, formed an important obstacle to a speedy unification. South German grammarians of the 16th century, such as Laurentius Albertus, raise a warning voice against those who, although far distant from the proper use of words and the true pronunciation, venture to teach nos puriores Germanos, namely, the Upper Germans.

In 1593 J. Helber, a Swiss schoolmaster and notary, spoke of three separate dialects as being in use by the printing presses:22 (1) Mitteldeutsch (the language of the printers in Leipzig, Erfurt, Nuremberg, Würzburg, Frankfort, Mainz, Spires, Strassburg and Cologne; at the last mentioned place in the event of their attempting to print Ober-Teutsch); (2) Donauisch (the printers’ language in South Germany, but limited to Bavaria and Swabia proper—here more particularly the Augsburg idiom, which was considered to be particularly zierlich);23 (3) Höchst Reinisch, which corresponds to Swiss German. Thus in the 16th century Germany was still far from real unity in its language; but to judge from the number and the geographical position of the towns which printed in Mitteldeutsch it is pretty clear which idiom would ultimately predominate. During the 17th century men like M. Opitz (Buch von der deutschen Poeterey) and J.G. Schottelius (Teutsche Sprachkunst, 1641, and Von der teutschen Sprachkunst, 1663), together with linguistic societies like the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft and the Nuremberg Pegnitzorden, did a great deal to purify the German language from foreign (especially French) elements; they insisted on the claims of the vernacular to a place beside and even above Latin (in 1687 Christian Thomasius held for the first time lectures in the German language at the university of Leipzig), and they established a firm grammatical basis for Luther’s common language, which especially in the hymnals had become modernized and more uniform. About the middle of the 17th century the disparity between the vowels of the singular and plural of the preterite of the strong verbs practically ceases; under East Middle German influence the final e is restored to words like Knabe, Jude, Pfaffe, which in South German had been Knab, &c.; the mixed declension (Ehre, Ehren; Schmerz, Schmerzen) was established, and the plural in -er was extended to some masculine nouns (Wald, Wälder);24 the use of the mutated sound has now become the rule as a plural sign (Väter, Bäume). How difficult, even in the first half of the 18th century, it was for a Swiss to write the literary language which Luther had established is to be seen from the often quoted words of Haller (1708-1777): “I am a Swiss, the German language is strange to me, and its choice of words was almost unknown to me.” The Catholic south clung firmly to its own literary language, based on the idiom of the imperial chancery, which was still an influential force in the 17th century or on local dialects. This is apparent in the writings of Abraham a Sancta Clara,25 who died in 1709, or in the attacks of the Benedictine monk, Augustin Dornblüth, on the Meissner Schriftsprache in 1755.

In the 18th century, to which these names have introduced us, the grammatical writings of J.C. Gottsched (Deutsche Sprachkunst, 1748) and J.C. Adelung (Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart, 1774-1786) exercised a decisive and far-reaching influence. Gottsched took as his basis the spoken language (Umgangssprache) of the educated classes of Upper Saxony (Meissen), which at this time approximated as nearly as possible to the literary language. His Grammar did enormous services to the cause of unification, ultimately winning over the resisting south; but he carried his purism to pedantic lengths, he would tolerate no archaic or dialectical words, no unusual forms or constructions, and consequently made the language unsuited for poetry. Meanwhile an interest in Old German literature was being awakened by Bodmer; Herder set forth better ideas on the nature of language, and insisted on the value of native idioms; and the Sturm und Drang led by Goethe encouraged all individualistic tendencies. All this gave rise to a movement counter to Gottsched’s absolutism, which resulted in the revival of many obsolete German words and forms, these being drawn partly from Luther’s Bible translation (cf. V. Hehn, “Goethe und die Sprache der Bibel,” in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, viii. p. 187 ff.), partly from the older language and partly from the vocabulary peculiar to different social ranks and trades.26 The latter is still a source of linguistic innovations. German literary style underwent a similar rejuvenation, for we are on the threshold of the second classical period of German literature. It had strengthened Gottsched’s hand as a linguistic reformer that the earlier leaders of German literature, such as Gellert, Klopstock and Lessing, were Middle Germans; now Wieland’s influence, which was particularly strong in South Germany, helped materially towards the establishment of one accepted literary language throughout all German-speaking countries; and the movement reaches its culmination with Goethe and Schiller. At the same time this unification did not imply the creation of an unalterable standard; for, just as the language of Opitz and Schottelius differed from that of Luther, so—although naturally in a lesser degree—the literary language of our day differs from that of the classic writers of the 18th century. Local peculiarities are still to be met with, as is to be seen in the modern German literature that emanates from Switzerland or Austria.

But this unity, imperfect as it is, is limited to the literary language. The differences are much more sharply accentuated in the Umgangssprache,27 whereby we understand the language as it is spoken by educated people throughout Germany; this is not only the case with regard to pronunciation, although it is naturally most noticeable here, but also with regard to the choice of words and the construction of sentences. Compared with the times of Goethe and Schiller a certain advance towards unification has undoubtedly been made, but the differences between north and south are still very great. This is particularly noticeable in the pronunciation of r—either the uvular r or the r produced by the tip of the tongue; of the voiced and voiceless stops, b, p, d, t, g and k; of the s sounds; of the diphthongs; of the long vowels ē and ōē, &c. (cf. W. Vietor, German Pronunciation, 2nd ed., 1890). The question as to whether a unified pronunciation (Einheitaussprache) is desirable or even possible has occupied the attention of academies, scholars and the educated public during recent years, and in 1898 a commission made up of scholars and theatre directors drew up a scheme of pronunciation for use in the royal theatres of Prussia.28 This scheme has since been recommended to all German theatres by the German Bühnenverein. Desirable as such a uniform pronunciation is for the national theatre, it is a much debated question how far it should be adopted in the ordinary speech of everyday life. Some scholars, such as W. Braune, declared themselves strongly in favour of its adoption;29 Braune’s argument being that the system of modern pronunciation is based on the spelling, not on the sounds produced in speaking. The latter, he holds, is only responsible for the pronunciation of -chs- as -ks- in wachsen, Ochse, &c., or for that of sp- and st- in spielen, stehen, &c. Other scholars, again, such as K. Luick and O. Brenner, warn against any such attempts to create a living language on an artificial basis;30 the Bühnendeutsch or “stage-German” they regard as little more than an abstract ideal. Thus the decision must be left to time.

Authorities.—General Literature: J. Grimm, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (Leipzig, 1848; 4th ed., 1880); W. Scherer, Zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (Berlin, 1868; 2nd ed., 1878); E. Förstemann, Geschichte des deutschen Sprachstammes (Nordhausen, 1874-1875); O. Behaghel, Die deutsche Sprache (Leipzig, 1886; 2nd ed., 1902); the same, “Geschichte der deutschen Sprache,” in Paul’s Grundriss der germanischen Philologie (2nd ed.), i. pp. 650 ff.; O. Weise, Unsere deutsche Sprache, ihr Werden und ihr Wesen (Leipzig, 1898); K. von Raumer, Geschichte der germanischen Philologie (Munich, 1870); J. Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik (4 vols., vols. i.-iii. in new edition, 1870-1890); Dieter, Laut- und Formenlehre der altgermanischen Dialekte (2 vols., Leipzig, 1898-1900); F. Kauffmann, Deutsche Grammatik (2nd ed., 1895); W. Wilmanns, Deutsche Grammatik, so far, vols, i., ii. and iii., 1 (Strassburg, 1893-1906, vol. i., 2nd ed., 1897); O. Brenner, Grundzüge der geschichtlichen Grammatik der deutschen Sprache (Munich, 1896); H. Lichtenberger, Histoire de la langue allemande (Paris, 1895).

Old and Middle High German Period: W. Braune, Althochdeutsche Grammatik (2nd ed., Halle, 1891); the same, Abriss der althochdeutschen Grammatik (3rd ed., 1900); F. Holthausen, Altsächsisches Elementarbuch (Heidelberg, 1899); W. Schlüter, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altsächsichen Sprache, i. (Göttingen, 1892); O. Schade, Altdeutsches Wörterbuch (2nd ed., Halle, 1872-1882); G.E. Graff, Althochdeutscher Sprachschatz (6 vols., Berlin, 1834-1842) (Index by Massmann, 1846); E. Steinmeyer and E. Sievers, Althochdeutsche Glossen (4 vols., Berlin, 1879-1898); J.A. Schmeller, Glossarium Saxonicum (Munich, 1840); K. Weinhold, Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik (3rd ed., Paderborn, 1892); H. Paul, Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik (5th ed., Halle, 1900); V. Michels, Mittelhochdeutsches Elementarbuch (Heidelberg, 1900); O. Brenner, Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik (3rd ed., Munich, 1894); K. Zwierzina, “Mittelhochdeutsche Studien,” in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, vols. xliv. and xlv.; A. Lübben, Mittelniederdeutsche Grammatik (Leipzig, 1882); W. Müller and F. Zarncke, Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch (4 vols., Leipzig, 1854-1866); M. Lexer, Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch (3 vols., 1872-1878); the same, Mittelhochdeutsches Taschenwörterbuch (8th ed., 1906); K. Schiller and A. Lübben, Mittelniederdeutsches Wörterbuch (6 vols., Bremen, 1875-1881); A. Lübben, Mittelniederdeutsches Handwörterbuch (Norden, 1888); F. Seiler, Die Entwicklung der deutsch. Kultur im Spiegel des deutschen Lehnworts (Halle, i., 1895, 2nd ed., 1905, ii., 1900).

Modern High German Period: E. Wülcker, “Die Entstehung der kursächsischen Kanzleisprache” (in the Zeitschrift des Vereins für kursächsische Geschichte, ix. p. 349); the same, “Luthers Stellung zur kursächsischen Kanzleisprache” (in Germania, xxviii. pp. 191 ff.); P. Pietsch, Martin Luther und die hochdeutsche Schriftsprache (Breslau, 1883); K. Burdach, Die Einigung der neuhochdeutschen Schriftsprache, (1883); E. Opitz, Die Sprache Luthers (Halle, 1869); J. Luther, Die Sprache Luthers in der Septemberbibel (Halle, 1887); F. Kluge, Von Luther bis Lessing (Strassburg, 1888) (cf. E. Schröder’s review in the Göttinger gelehrte Anzeiger, 1888, 249); H. Rückert, Geschichte der neuhochdeutschen Schriftsprache bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (1875): J. Kehrein, Grammatik der deutschen Sprache des 15. bis 17. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1863); K. von Bahder, Grundlagen des neuhochdeutschen Lautsystems (Strassburg, 1890); R. Meyer, Einführung in das ältere Neuhochdeutsche (Leipzig, 1894); W. Scheel, Beiträge zur Geschichte der neuhochdeutschen Gemeinsprache in Köln (Marburg, 1892); R. Brandstetter, Die Rezeption der neuhochdeutschen Schriftsprache in Stadt und Landschaft Luzern (1892); K. Burdach, “Zur Geschichte der neuhochdeutschen Schriftsprache” (Forschungen zur deutschen Philologie, 1894); the same, “Die Sprache des jungen Goethe” (Verhandlungen der Dessauer Philologenversammlung, 1884, p. 164 ff.); F. Kasch, Die Sprache des jungen Schiller (Dissertation, 1900); F. Kluge, “Über die Entstehung unserer Schriftsprache” (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift des allgemeinen Sprachvereins, Heft 6, 1894); A. Waag, Bedeutungsentwickelung unseres Wortschatzes (Lahr, 1901).

Mention must also be made of the work of the German commission of the Royal Prussian Academy, which in 1904 drew up plans for making an inventory of all German literary MSS. dating from before the year 1600 and for the publication of Middle High German and early Modern High German texts. This undertaking, which has made considerable progress, provides rich material for the study of the somewhat neglected period between the 14th and 16th centuries; at the same time it provides a basis on which a monumental history of Modern High German may be built up, as well as for a Thesaurus linguae germanicae.

(R. Pr.)

1 K. Müllenhoff and W. Scherer, Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prosa, 3rd ed., by E. Steinmeyer, 1892, No. lxvii.

2 For a detailed description of the boundary line cf. O. Behaghel’s article in Paul’s Grundriss, 2nd ed., pp. 652-657, where there is also a map, and a very full bibliography relative to the changes in the boundary.

3 Cf. J. Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, 3rd ed., i. p. 13; F. Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., pp. 75 ff.; K. Luick, “Zur Geschichte des Wortes ‘deutsch,’” in Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum, xv., pp. 135, 248; H. Fischer, “Theotiscus, Deutsch,” in Paul and Braune’s Beiträge, xviii. p. 203; H. Paul, Deutsches Wörterbuch (1897), p. 93.

4 Cf. P. Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache (Göttingen, 1896), who holds the mingling of Celtic and Germanic elements in southern and south-western Germany responsible for the change. It might also be mentioned here that H. Meyer (Zeitschrift f. deut. Altertum, xlv. pp. 101 ff.) endeavours to explain the first soundshifting by the change of abode of the Germanic tribes from the lowlands to the highlands of the Carpathian Mountains.

5 Of writers who have made extensive use of dialects, it must suffice to mention here the names of J.H. Voss, Hebel, Klaus Groth, Fritz Reuter, Usteri, G.D. Arnold, Holtei, Castelli, J.G. Seidl and Anzengruber, and in our own days G. Hauptmann.

6 Cf. F. Staub and L. Tobler, Schweizerisches Idiotikon (1881 ff.); E. Martin and F. Lienhart, Wörterbuch der elsässischen Mundarten (Strassburg, 1899 ff.); H. Fischer, Schwäbisches Wörterbuch (Tübingen, 1901 ff.). Earlier works, which are already completed, are J.A. Schmeller, Bayrisches Wörterbuch (2nd ed., 2 vols., Munich, 1872-1877); J.B. Schöpf, Tiroler Idiotikon (Innsbruck, 1886); M. Lexer, Kärntisches Wörterbuch (1862); H. Gradl, Egerländer Wörterbuch, i. (Eger, 1883); A.F.C. Vilmar, Idiotikon von Kurhessen (Marburg, 1883) (with supplements by H. von Pfister); W. Crecelius, Oberhessisches Wörterbuch (Darmstadt, 1890-1898). Professor J. Franck is responsible for a Rheinisches Wörterbuch for the Prussian Academy.

7 Cf. the article “Mundarten” by R. Loewe in R. Bethge, Ergebnisse und Fortschritte der germanistischen Wissenschaft (Leipzig, 1902), pp. 75-88; and F. Mentz, Bibliographie der deutschen Mundartforschung (Leipzig, 1892). Of periodicals may be mentioned Deutsche Mundarten, by J.W. Nagl (Vienna, 1896 ff.); Zeitschrift für hochdeutsche Mundarten, by O. Heilig and Ph. Lenz (Heidelberg, 1900 ff.), continued as Zeitschrift f. deutsche Mundarten, Verlag des Allgemeinen Deutschen Sprachvereins. Owing to its importance as a model for subsequent monographs J. Kinteler’s Die Kerenzer Mundart des Kantons Glarus (Leipzig, 1876) should not be passed unnoticed.

8 Cf. especially H. Tümpel, “Die Mundarten des alten niedersächsischen Gebietes zwischen 1300 und 1500” (Paul und Braune’s Beiträge, vii. pp. 1-104); Niederdeutsche Studien, by the same writer (Bielefeld, 1898); Bahnke, “Über Sprach- und Gaugrenzen zwischen Elbe und Weser” (Jahrbuch des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung, vii. p. 77).

9 Upper Saxon and Thuringian are sometimes taken as a separate group.

10 Cf. W. Braune, “Zur Kenntnis des Fränkischen” (Beiträge, i. pp. 1-56); O. Böhme, Zur Kenntnis des Oberfränkischen im 13., 14. und 15. Jahrh. (Dissertation) (Leipzig, 1893), where a good account of the differences between the Rhenish Franconian and South Franconian dialects will be found.

11 Cf. C. Nörrenberg, “Lautverschiebungsstufe des Mittelfränkischen” (Beiträge, ix. 371 ff.); R. Heinzel, Geschichte der niederfränkischen Geschäftssprache (Paderborn, 1874).

12 This is also the dialect of the so-called Siebenbürger Sachsen.

13 Cf. E. Sievers, Oxforder Benediktinerregel (Halle, 1887), p. xvi.; J. Meier, Jolande (1887), pp. vii. ff.; O. Böhme, l.c. p. 60.

14 Lower Hesse (the northern and eastern parts) goes, however, in many respects its own way.

15 On the High German dialects cf. K. Weinhold, Alemannische Grammatik (Berlin, 1863); F. Kauffmann, Geschichte der schwäbischen Mundart (Strassburg, 1870); E. Haendcke, Die mundartlichen Elemente in den elsässischen Urkunden (Strassburg, 1894); K. Weinhold, Bairische Grammatik (1867); J.A. Schmeller, Die Mundarten Baierns (Munich, 1821); J.N. Schwäbl, Die altbairischen Mundarten (München, 1903); O. Brenner, Mundarten und Schriftsprache in Bayern (Bamberg, 1890); J. Schatz, Die Mundart von Imst (Strassburg, 1897); J.W. Nagl, Der Vocalismus der bairisch-österreichischen Mundarten (1890-1891); W. Gradl, Die Mundarten Westböhmens (Munich, 1896); P. Lessiak, “Die Mundart von Pernegg in Kärnten” (Paul and Braune, Beiträge, vol. xxviii.).

16 Cf., for a hypothesis of two Umlautsperioden during the Old High German time, F. Kauffmann, Geschichte der schwäbischen Mundart (Strassburg, 1890), S. 152.

17 Cf. W. Wilmanns, Deutsche Grammatik, i. (2nd edition) pp. 300-304.

18 Wilmanns, l.c. pp. 273-280. It might be mentioned that, in Modern High German, these new diphthongs are neither in spelling nor in educated pronunciation distinguished from the older ones.

19 Cf. Wilmanns, pp. 280-284.

20 Ibid. pp. 129-132.

21 Cf. K. Lachmann, Kleinere Schriften, i. p. 161 ff.; Müllenhoff and Scherer’s Denkmäler (3rd ed.), i. p. xxvii.; H. Paul, Gab es eine mhd. Schriftsprache? (Halle, 1873); O. Behaghel, Zur Frage nach einer mhd. Schriftsprache (Basel, 1886) (Cf. Paul and Braune’s Beiträge, xiii. p. 464 ff.); A. Socin, Schriftsprache und Dialekte (Heilbronn, 1888); H. Fischer, Zur Geschichte des Mittelhochdeutschen (Tübingen, 1889); O. Behaghel, Schriftsprache und Mundart (Giessen, 1896); K. Zwierzina, Beobachtungen zum Reimgebrauch Hartmanns und Wolframs (Haile, 1898); S. Singer, Die mhd. Schriftsprache (1900); C. Kraus, Heinrich von Veldeke und die mhd. Dichtersprache (Halle, 1899); G. Roethe, Die Reimvorreden des Sachsenspiegels (Berlin, 1899); H. Tümpel, Niederdeutsche Studien (1898).

22 For literature bearing on the complicated question of the Druckersprachen, readers are referred to the article “Neuhochdeutsche Schriftsprache,” by W. Scheel, in Bethge’s Ergebnisse ... der germanistischen Wissenschaft (1902), pp. 47, 50 f. Cf. also K. von Bahder, Grundlagen des nhd. Lautsystems (1890), pp. 15 ff.

23 A German Priamel mentions as an essential quality in a beautiful woman: “die red dort her von Swaben.”

24 Cf. for a detailed discussion of the noun declension, K. Boiunga, Die Entwicklung der mhd. Substantivflexion (Leipzig, 1890); and, more particularly for the masculine and neuter nouns, two articles by H. Molz, “Die Substantivflexion seit mhd. Zeit,” in Paul and Braune’s Beiträge, xxvii. p. 209 ff. and xxxi. 277 ff. For the changes in the gender of nouns, A. Polzin, Geschlechtswandel der Substantiva im Deutschen (Hildesheim, 1903).

25 Cf. C. Blanckenburg, Studien über die Sprache Abrahams a S. Clara (Halle, 1897); H. Strigl, “Einiges über die Sprache des P. Abraham a Sancta Clara” (Zeitschr. f. deutsche Wortforschung, viii. 206 ff.).

26 Cf. F. Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch (6th ed.), pp. 508 ff. One can speak of: Studenten-, Soldaten-, Weidmanns-, Bergmanns-, Drucker-, Juristen-, und Zigeunersprache, und Rotwelsch. Cf. F. Kluge, Die deutsche Studentensprache (Strassburg, 1894); Rotwelsch i. (Strassburg, 1901); R. Bethge, Ergebnisse, &c., p. 55 f.

27 Cf. H. Wunderlich, Unsere Umgangssprache (Weimar, 1894).

28 Cf. Th. Siebs, Deutsche Bühnenaussprache (2nd ed., Berlin, 1901), and the same writer’s Grundzüge der Bühnensprache (1900).

29 W. Braune, Über die Einigung der deutschen Aussprache (Halle, 1905); and the review by O. Brenner, in the Zeitschrift des allgemeinen deutschen Sprachvereins, Beihefte iv. 27, pp. 228-232.

30 Cf. K. Luick, Deutsche Lautlehre mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Sprechweise Wiens und der österreichischen Alpenländer (1904); O. Brenner, “Zur Aussprache des Hochdeutschen” l.c., pp. 218-228.

GERMAN LITERATURE. Compared with other literatures, that of the German-speaking peoples presents a strangely broken and interrupted course; it falls into more or less isolated groups, separated from each other by periods which in intellectual darkness and ineptitude are virtually without a parallel in other European lands. The explanation of this irregularity of development is to be sought less in the chequered political history of the German people—although this was often reason enough—than in the strongly marked, one might almost say, provocative character of the national mind as expressed in literature. The Germans were not able, like their partially latinized English cousins—or even their Scandinavian neighbours—to adapt themselves to the various waves of literary influence which emanated from Italy and France and spread with irresistible power over all Europe; their literary history has been rather a struggle for independent expression, a constant warring against outside forces, even when the latter—like the influence of English literature in the 18th century and of Scandinavian at the close of the 19th—were hailed as friendly and not hostile. It is a peculiarity of German literature that in those ages when, owing to its own poverty and impotence, it was reduced to borrowing its ideas and its poetic forms from other lands, it sank to the most servile imitation; while the first sign of returning health has invariably been the repudiation of foreign influence and the assertion of the right of genius to untrammelled expression. Thus Germany’s periods of literary efflorescence rarely coincide with those of other nations, and great European movements, like the Renaissance, passed over her without producing a single great poet.

This chequered course, however, renders the grouping of German literature and the task of the historian the easier. The first and simplest classification is that afforded by the various stages of linguistic development. In accordance with the three divisions in the history of the High German language, there is an Old High German, a Middle High German and a New High German or Modern High German literary epoch. It is obvious, however, that the last of these divisions covers too enormous a period of literary history to be regarded as analogous to the first two. The present survey is consequently divided into six main sections:

I. The Old High German Period, including the literature of the Old Saxon dialect, from the earliest times to the middle of the 11th century.

II. The Middle High German Period, from the middle of the 11th to the middle of the 14th century.

III. The Transition Period, from the middle of the 14th century to the Reformation in the 16th century.

IV. The Period of Renaissance and Pseudo-classicism, from the end of the 16th century to the middle of the 18th.

V. The Classical Period of Modern German literature, from the middle of the 18th century to Goethe’s death in 1832.

VI. The Period from Goethe’s death to the present day.

I. The Old High German Period (c. 750-1050)

Of all the Germanic races, the tribes with which we have more particularly to deal here were the latest to attain intellectual maturity. The Goths had, centuries earlier, under their famous bishop Ulfilas or Wulfila, possessed the Bible in their vernacular, the northern races could point to their Edda, the Germanic tribes in England to a rich and virile Old English poetry, before a written German literature of any consequence existed at all. At the same time, these continental tribes, in the epoch that lay between the Migrations of the 5th century and the age of Charles the Great, were not without poetic literature of a kind, but it was not committed to writing, or, at least, no record of such a poetry has come down to us. Its existence is vouched for by indirect historical evidence, and by the fact that the sagas, out of which the German national epic was welded at a later date, originated in the great upheaval of the 5th century. When the vernacular literature began to emerge from an unwritten state in the 8th century, it proved to be merely a weak reflection of the ecclesiastical writings of the monasteries; and this, with very few exceptions, Old High German literature remained. Translations of the liturgy, of Tatian’s Gospel Harmony (c. 835), of fragments of sermons, form a large proportion of it. Occasionally, as in the so-called Monsee Fragments, and at the end of the period, in the prose of Notker Labeo (d. 1022), this ecclesiastical literature attains a surprising maturity of style and expression. But it had no vitality of its own; it virtually sprang into existence at the command of Charlemagne, whose policy with regard to the use of the vernacular in place of Latin was liberal and far-seeing; and it docilely obeyed the tastes of the rulers that followed, becoming severely orthodox under Louis the Pious, and consenting to immediate extinction when the Saxon emperors withdrew their favour from it. Apart from a few shorter poetic fragments of interest, such as the Merseburg Charms (Zaubersprüche), an undoubted relic of pre-Christian times, the Wessobrunn Prayer (c. 780), the Muspilli, an imaginative description of the Day of Judgment, and the Ludwigslied (881), which may be regarded as the starting point for the German historical ballad, the only High German poem of importance in this early period was the Gospel Book (Liber evangeliorum) of Otfrid of Weissenburg (c. 800-870). Even this work is more interesting as the earliest attempt to supersede alliteration in German poetry by rhyme, than for such poetic life as the monk of Weissenburg was able to instil into his narrative. In fact, for the only genuine poetry of this epoch we have to look, not to the High German but to the Low German races. They alone seemed able to give literary expression to the memories handed down in oral tradition from the 5th century; to Saxon tradition we owe the earliest extant fragment of a national saga, the Lay of Hildebrand (Hildebrandslied, c. 800), and a Saxon poet was the author of a vigorous alliterative version of the Gospel story, the Heliand (c. 830), and also of part of the Old Testament (Genesis). This alliterative epic—for epic it may be called—is the one poem of this age in which the Christian tradition has been adapted to German poetic needs. Of the existence of a lyric poetry we only know by hearsay; and the drama had nowhere in Europe yet emerged from its earliest purely liturgic condition. Such as it was, the vernacular literature of the Old High German period enjoyed but a brief existence, and in the 10th and 11th centuries darkness again closed over it. The dominant “German” literature in these centuries is in Latin; but that literature is not without national interest, for it shows in what direction the German mind was moving. The Lay of Walter (Waltharilied, c. 930), written in elegant hexameters by Ekkehard of St Gall, the moralizing dramas of Hrosvitha (Roswitha) of Gandersheim, the Ecbasis captivi (c. 940), earliest of all the Beast epics, and the romantic adventures of Ruodlieb (c. 1030), form a literature which, Latin although it is, foreshadows the future developments of German poetry.

II. The Middle High German Period (1050-1350)

(a) Early Middle High German Poetry.—The beginnings of Middle High German literature were hardly less tentative than those of the preceding period. The Saxon emperors, with their Latin and even Byzantine tastes, had made it extremely difficult to take up the thread where Notker let it drop. Williram of Ebersberg, the commentator of the Song of Songs (c. 1063), did certainly profit by Notker’s example, but he stands alone. The Church had no helping hand to offer poetry, as in the more liberal epoch of the great Charles; for, at the middle of the 11th century, when the linguistic change from Old to Middle High German was taking place, a movement of religious asceticism, originating in the Burgundian monastery of Cluny, spread across Europe, and before long all the German peoples fell under its influence. For a century there was no room for any literature that did not place itself unreservedly at the service of the Church, a service which meant the complete abnegation of the brighter side of life. Repellent in their asceticism are, for instance, poems like Memento mori (c. 1050), Vom Glauben, a verse commentary on the creed by a monk Hartmann (c. 1120), and a poem on “the remembrance of death” (Von des todes gehugede) by Heinreich von Melk (c. 1150); only rarely, as in a few narrative Poems on Old Testament subjects, are the poets of this time able to forget for a time their lugubrious faith. In the Ezzolied (c. 1060), a spirited lay by a monk of Bamberg on the life, miracles and death of Christ, and in the Annolied (c. 1080), a poem in praise of the archbishop Anno of Cologne, we find, however, some traces of a higher poetic imagination.

The transition from this rigid ecclesiastic spirit to a freer, more imaginative literature is to be seen in the lyric poetry inspired by the Virgin, in the legends of the saints which bulk so largely in the poetry of the 12th century, and in the general trend towards mysticism. Andreas, Pilatus, Aegidius, Albanius are the heroes of monkish romances of that age, and the stories of Sylvester and Crescentia form the most attractive parts of the Kaiserchronik (c. 1130-1150), a long, confused chronicle of the world which contains many elements common to later Middle High German poetry. The national sagas, of which the poet of the Kaiserchronik had not been oblivious, soon began to assert themselves in the popular literature. The wandering Spielleute, the lineal descendants of the jesters and minstrels of the dark ages, who were now rapidly becoming a factor of importance in literature, were here the innovators; to them we owe the romance of König Rother (c. 1160), and the kindred stories of Orendel, Oswald and Salomon und Markolf (Salman und Morolf). All these poems bear witness to a new element, which in these years kindled the German imagination and helped to counteract the austerity of the religious faith—the Crusades. With what alacrity the Germans revelled in the wonderland of the East is to be seen especially in the Alexanderlied (c. 1130), and in Herzog Ernst (c. 1180), romances which point out the way to another important development of German medieval literature, the Court epic. The latter type of romance was the immediate product of the social conditions created by chivalry and, like chivalry itself, was determined and influenced by its French origin; so also was the version of the Chanson de Roland (Rolandslied, c. 1135), which we owe to another priest, Konrad of Regensburg, who, with considerable probability, has been identified with the author of the Kaiserchronik.

The Court epic was, however, more immediately ushered in by Eilhart von Oberge, a native of the neighbourhood of Hildesheim who, in his Tristant (c. 1170), chose that Arthurian type of romance which from now on was especially cultivated by the poets of the Court epic; and of equally early origin is a knightly romance of Floris und Blancheflur, another of the favourite love stories of the middle ages. In these years, too, the Beast epic, which had been represented by the Latin Ecbasis captivi, was reintroduced into Germany by an Alsatian monk, Heinrich der Glichezære, who based his Reinhart Fuchs (c. 1180) on the French Roman de Renart. Lastly, we have to consider the beginning of the Minnesang, or lyric, which in the last decades of the 12th century burst out with extraordinary vigour in Austria and South Germany. The origins are obscure, and it is still debatable how much in the German Minnesang is indigenous and national, how much due to French and Provençal influence; for even in its earliest phases the Minnesang reveals correspondences with the contemporary lyric of the south of France. The freshness and originality of the early South German singers, such as Kürenberg, Dietmar von Eist, the Burggraf of Rietenburg and Meinloh von Sevelingen, are not, however, to be questioned; in spite of foreign influence, their verses make the impression of having been a spontaneous expression of German lyric feeling in the 12th century. The Spruchdichtung, a form of poetry which in this period is represented by at least two poets who call themselves Herger and “Der Spervogel,” was less dependent on foreign models; the pointed and satirical strophes of these poets were the forerunners of a vast literature which did not reach its highest development until after literature had passed from the hands of the noble-born knight to those of the burgher of the towns.

(b) The Flourishing of Middle High German Poetry.—Such was the preparation for the extraordinarily brilliant, although brief epoch of German medieval poetry, which corresponded to the reigns of the Hohenstaufen emperors, Frederick I. Barbarossa, Henry VI. and Frederick II. These rulers, by their ambitious political aspirations and achievements, filled the German peoples with a sense of “world-mission,” as the leading political power in medieval Europe. Docile pupils of French chivalry, the Germans had no sooner learned their lesson than they found themselves in the position of being able to dictate to the world of chivalry. In the same way, the German poets, who, in the 12th century, had been little better than clumsy translators of French romances, were able, at the beginning of the 13th, to substitute for French chansons de geste epics based on national sagas, to put a completely German imprint on the French Arthurian romance, and to sing German songs before which even the lyric of Provence paled. National epic, Court epic and Minnesang—these three types of medieval German literature, to which may be added as a subordinate group didactic poetry, comprise virtually all that has come down to us in the Middle High German tongue. A Middle High German prose hardly existed, and the drama, such as it was, was still essentially Latin.

The first place among the National or Popular epics belongs to the Nibelungenlied, which received its present form in Austria about the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries. Combining, as it does, elements from various cycles of sagas—the lower Rhenish legend of Siegfried, the Burgundian saga of Gunther and Hagen, the Gothic saga of Dietrich and Etzel—it stands out as the most representative epic of German medieval life. And in literary power, dramatic intensity and singleness of purpose its eminence is no less unique. The vestiges of gradual growth—of irreconcilable elements imperfectly welded together—may not have been entirely effaced, but they in no way lessen the impression of unity which the poem leaves behind it; whoever the welder of the sagas may have been, he was clearly a poet of lofty imagination and high epic gifts (see Nibelungenlied). Less imposing as a whole, but in parts no less powerful in its appeal to the modern mind, is the second of the German national epics, Gudrun, which was written early in the 13th century. This poem, as it has come down to us, is the work of an Austrian, but the subject belongs to a cycle of sagas which have their home on the shores of the North Sea. It seems almost a freak of chance that Siegfried, the hero of the Rhineland, should occupy so prominent a position in the Nibelungenlied, whereas Dietrich von Bern (i.e. of Verona), the name under which Theodoric the Great had been looked up to for centuries by the German people as their national hero, should have left the stamp of his personality on no single epic of the intrinsic worth of the Nibelungenlied. He appears, however, more or less in the background of a number of romances—Die Rabenschlacht, Dietrichs Flucht, Alpharts Tod, Biterolf und Dietlieb, Laurin, &c.—which make up what is usually called the Heldenbuch. It is tempting, indeed, to see in this very unequal collection the basis for what, under more favourable circumstances, might have developed into an epic even more completely representative of the German nation than the Nibelungenlied.

While the influence of the romance of chivalry is to be traced on all these popular epics, something of the manlier, more primitive ideals that animated German national poetry passed over to the second great group of German medieval poetry, the Court epic. The poet who, following Eilhart von Oberge’s tentative beginnings, established the Court epic in Germany was Heinrich von Veldeke, a native of the district of the lower Rhine; his Eneit, written between 1173 and 1186, is based on a French original. Other poets of the time, such as Herbort von Fritzlar, the author of a Liet von Troye, followed Heinrich’s example, and selected French models for German poems on antique themes; while Albrecht von Halberstadt translated about the year 1210 the Metamorphoses of Ovid into German verse. With the three masters of the Court epic, Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg—all of them contemporaries—the Arthurian cycle became the recognized theme of this type of romance, and the accepted embodiment of the ideals of the knightly classes. Hartmann was a Swabian, Wolfram a Bavarian, Gottfried presumably a native of Strassburg. Hartmann, who in his Erec and Iwein, Gregorius and Der arme Heinrich combined a tendency towards religious asceticism with a desire to imbue the worldly life of the knight with a moral and religious spirit, provided the Court epic of the age with its best models; he had, of all the medieval court poets, the most delicate sense for the formal beauty of poetry, for language, verse and style. Wolfram and Gottfried, on the other hand, represent two extremes of poetic temperament. Wolfram’s Parzival is filled with mysticism and obscure spiritual significance; its flashes of humour irradiate, although they can hardly be said to illumine, the gloom; its hero is, unconsciously, a symbol and allegory of much which to the poet himself must have been mysterious and inexplicable; in other words, Parzival—and Wolfram’s other writings, Willehalm and Titurel, point in the same direction—is an instinctive or, to use Schiller’s word, a “naïve” work of genius. Gottfried, again, is hardly less gifted and original, but he is a poet of a wholly different type. His Tristan is even more lucid than Hartmann’s Iwein, his art is more objective; his delight in it is that of the conscious artist who sees his work growing under his hands. Gottfried’s poem, in other words, is free from the obtrusion of those subjective elements which are in so high a degree characteristic of Parzival; in spite of the tragic character of the story, Tristan is radiant and serene, and yet uncontaminated by that tone of frivolity which the Renaissance introduced into love stories of this kind.

Parzival and Tristan are the two poles of the German Court epic, and the subsequent development of that epic stands under the influence of the three poets, Hartmann, Wolfram and Gottfried; according as the poets of the 13th century tend to imitate one or other of these, they fall into three classes. To the followers and imitators of Hartmann belong Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, the author of a Lanzelet (c. 1195); Wirnt von Gravenberg, a Bavarian, whose Wigalois (c. 1205) shows considerable imaginative power; the versatile Spielmann, known as “Der Stricker”; and Heinrich von dem Türlin, author of an unwieldy epic, Die Krone (“the crown of all adventures,” c. 1220). The fascination of Wolfram’s mysticism is to be seen in Der jüngere Titurel of a Bavarian poet, Albrecht von Scharfenberg (c. 1270), and in the still later Lohengrin of an unknown poet; whereas Gottfried von Strassburg dominates the Flore und Blanscheflur of Konrad Fleck (c. 1220) and the voluminous romances of the two chief poets of the later 13th century, Rudolf von Ems, who died in 1254, and Konrad von Würzburg, who lived till 1287. Of these, Konrad alone carried on worthily the traditions of the great age, and even his art, which excels within the narrow limits of romances like Die Herzemoere and Engelhard, becomes diffuse and wearisome on the unlimited canvas of Der Trojanerkrieg and Partonopier und Meliur.

The most conspicuous changes which came over the narrative poetry of the 13th century were, on the one hand, a steady encroachment of realism on the matter and treatment of the epic, and, on the other, a leaning to didacticism. The substitution of the “history” of the chronicle for the confessedly imaginative stories of the earlier poets is to be seen in the work of Rudolf von Ems, and of a number of minor chroniclers like Ulrich von Eschenbach, Berthold von Holle and Jans Enikel; while for the growth of realism we may look to the Pfaffe Amis, a collection of comic anecdotes by “Der Stricker,” the admirable peasant romance Meier Helmbrecht, written between 1236 and 1250 by Wernher der Gartenaere in Bavaria, and to the adventures of Ulrich von Lichtenstein, as described in his Frauendienst (1255) and Frauenbuch (1257).

More than any single poet of the Court epic, more even than the poet of the Nibelungenlied, Walther von der Vogelweide summed up in himself all that was best in the group of poetic literature with which he was associated—the Minnesang. The early Austrian singers already mentioned, poets like Heinrich von Veldeke, who in his lyrics, as in his epic, introduced the French conception of Minne, or like the manly Friedrich von Hausen, and the Swiss imitator of Provençal measures, Rudolf von Fenis appear only in the light of forerunners. Even more original poets, like Heinrich von Morungen and Walther’s own master, Reinmar von Hagenau, the author of harmonious but monotonously elegiac verses, or among immediate contemporaries, Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach, whose few lyric strophes are as deeply stamped with his individuality as his epics—seem only tributary to the full rich stream of Walther’s genius. There was not a form of the German Minnesang which Walther did not amplify and deepen; songs of courtly love and lowly love, of religious faith and delight in nature, patriotic songs and political Sprüche—in all he was a master. Of Walther’s life we are somewhat better informed than in the case of his contemporaries: he was born about 1170 and died about 1230; his art he learned in Austria, whereupon he wandered through South Germany, a welcome guest wherever he went, although his vigorous championship of what he regarded as the national cause in the political struggles of the day won him foes as well as friends. For centuries he remained the accepted exemplar of German lyric poetry; not merely the Minnesänger who followed him, but also the Meistersinger of the 15th and 16th centuries looked up to him as one of the founders and lawgivers of their art. He was the most influential of all Germany’s lyric poets, and in the breadth, originality and purity of his inspiration one of her greatest (see Walther von der Vogelweide).

The development of the German Minnesang after Walther’s death and under his influence is easily summed up. Contemporaries had been impressed by the dual character of Walther’s lyric; they distinguished a higher courtly lyric, and a lower more outspoken form of song, free from the constraint of social or literary conventions. The later Minnesang emphasized this dualism. Amongst Walther’s immediate contemporaries, high-born poets, whose lives were passed at courts, naturally cultivated the higher lyric; but the more gifted and original singers of the time rejoiced in the freedom of Walther’s poetry of niedere Minne. It was, in fact, in accordance with the spirit of the age that the latter should have been Walther’s most valuable legacy to his successors; and the greatest of these, Neidhart von Reuental (c. 1180-c. 1250), certainly did not allow himself to be hampered by aristocratic prejudices. Neidhart sought the themes of his höfische Dorfpoesie in the village, and, as the mood happened to dictate, depicted the peasant with humorous banter or biting satire. The lyric poets of the later 13th century were either, like Burkart von Hohenfels, Ulrich von Winterstetten and Gottfried von Neifen, echoes of Walther von der Vogelweide and of Neidhart, or their originality was confined to some particular form of lyric poetry in which they excelled. Thus the singer known as “Der Tannhäuser” distinguished himself as an imitator of the French pastourelle; Reinmar von Zweter was purely a Spruchdichter. More or less common to all is the consciousness that their own ideas and surroundings were no longer in harmony with the aristocratic world of chivalry, which the poets of the previous generation had glorified. The solid advantages, material prosperity and increasing comfort of life in the German towns appealed to poets like Steinmar von Klingenau more than the unworldly ideals of self-effacing knighthood which Ulrich von Lichtenstein and Johann Hadlaub of Zürich clung to so tenaciously and extolled so warmly. On the whole, the Spruchdichter came best out of this ordeal of changing fashions; and the increasing interest in the moral and didactic applications of literature favoured the development of this form of verse. The confusion of didactic purpose with the lyric is common to all the later poetry, to that of the learned Marner, of Boppe, Rumezland and Heinrich von Meissen, who was known to later generations as “Frauenlob.” The Spruchdichtung, in fact, was one of the connecting links between the Minnesang of the 13th and the lyric and satiric poetry of the 15th and 16th centuries.

The disturbing and disintegrating element in the literature of the 13th century was thus the substitution of a utilitarian didacticism for the idealism of chivalry. In the early decades of that century, poems like Der Winsbeke, by a Bavarian, and Der welsche Gast, written in 1215-1216 by Thomasin von Zirclaere (Zirclaria), a native of Friuli, still teach with uncompromising idealism the duties and virtues of the knightly life. But in the Bescheidenheit (c. 1215-1230) of a wandering singer, who called himself Freidank, we find for the first time an active antagonism to the unworldly code of chivalry and an unmistakable reflection of the changing social order, brought about by the rise of what we should now call the middle class. Freidank is the spokesman of the Bürger, and in his terse, witty verses may be traced the germs of German intellectual and literary development in the coming centuries—even of the Reformation itself. From the advent of Freidank onwards, the satiric and didactic poetry went the way of the epic; what it gained in quantity it lost in quality and concentration. The satires associated with the name of Seifried Helbling, an Austrian who wrote in the last fifteen years of the 13th century, and Der Renner by Hugo von Trimberg, written at the very end of the century, may be taken as characteristic of the later period, where terseness and incisive wit have given place to diffuse moralizing and allegory.

There is practically no Middle High German literature in prose; such prose as has come down to us—the tracts of David of Augsburg, the powerful sermons of Berthold von Regensburg (d. 1272), Germany’s greatest medieval preacher, and several legal codes, as the Sachsenspiegel and Schwabenspiegel—only prove that the Germans of the 13th century had not yet realized the possibilities of prose as a medium of literary expression.

III. The Transition Period (1350-1600)

(a) The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries.—As is the case with all transitional periods of literary history, this epoch of German literature may be considered under two aspects: on the one hand, we may follow in it the decadence and disintegration of the literature of the Middle High German period; on the other, we may study the beginnings of modern forms of poetry and the preparation of that spiritual revolution, which meant hardly less to the Germanic peoples than the Renaissance to the Latin races—the Protestant Reformation.

By the middle of the 14th century, knighthood with its chivalric ideals was rapidly declining, and the conditions under which medieval poetry had flourished were passing away. The social change rendered the courtly epic of Arthur’s Round Table in great measure incomprehensible to the younger generation, and made it difficult for them to understand the spirit that actuated the heroes of the national epic; the tastes to which the lyrics of the great Minnesingers had appealed were vitiated by the more practical demands of the rising middle classes. But the stories of chivalry still appealed as stories to the people, although the old way of telling them was no longer appreciated. The feeling for beauty of form and expression was lost; the craving for a moral purpose and didactic aim had to be satisfied at the cost of artistic beauty; and sensational incident was valued more highly than fine character-drawing or inspired poetic thought. Signs of the decadence are to be seen in the Karlmeinet of this period, stories from the youth of Charlemagne, in a continuation of Parzival by two Alsatians, Claus Wisse and Philipp Colin (c. 1335), in an Apollonius von Tyrus by Heinrich von Neuenstadt (c. 1315), and a Königstochter von Frankreich by Hans von Bühel (c. 1400). The story of Siegfried was retold in a rough ballad, Das Lied von hürnen Seyfried, the Heldenbuch was recast in Knittelvers or doggerel (1472), and even the Arthurian epic was parodied. A no less marked symptom of decadence is to be seen in a large body of allegorical poetry analogous to the Roman de la rose in France; Heinzelein of Constance, at the end of the 13th, and Hadamar von Laber and Hermann von Sachsenheim, about the middle of the 15th century, were representatives of this movement. As time went on, prose versions of the old stories became more general, and out of these developed the Volksbücher, such as Loher und Maller, Die Haimonskinder, Die schöne Magelone, Melusine, which formed the favourite reading of the German people for centuries. As the last monuments of the decadent narrative literature of the middle ages, we may regard the Buch der Abenteuer of Ulrich Füetrer, written at the end of the 15th century, and Der Weisskönig and Teuerdank by the emperor Maximilian I. (1459-1519) printed in the early years of the 16th. At the beginning of the new epoch the Minnesang could still point to two masters able to maintain the great traditions of the 13th century, Hugo von Montfort (1357-1423) and Oswald von Wolkenstein (1367-1445); but as the lyric passed into the hands of the middle-class poets of the German towns, it was rapidly shorn of its essentially lyric qualities; die Minne gave place to moral and religious dogmatism, emphasis was laid on strict adherence to the rules of composition, and the simple forms of the older lyric were superseded by ingenious metrical distortions. Under the influence of writers like Heinrich von Meissen (“Frauenlob,” c. 1250-1318) and Heinrich von Mügeln in the 14th century, like Muskatblut and Michael Beheim (1416-c. 1480) in the 15th, the Minnesang thus passed over into the Meistergesang. In the later 15th and in the 16th centuries all the south German towns possessed flourishing Meistersinger schools in which the art of writing verse was taught and practised according to complicated rules, and it was the ambition of every gifted citizen to rise through the various grades from Schüler to Meister and to distinguish himself in the “singing contests” instituted by the schools.

Such are the decadent aspects of the once rich literature of the Middle High German period in the 14th and 15th centuries. Turning now to the more positive side of the literary movement, we have to note a revival of a popular lyric poetry—the Volkslied—which made the futility and artificiality of the Meistergesang more apparent. Never before or since has Germany been able to point to such a rich harvest of popular poetry as is to be seen in the Volkslieder of these two centuries. Every form of popular poetry is to be found here—songs of love and war, hymns and drinking-songs, songs of spring and winter, historical ballads, as well as lyrics in which the old motives of the Minnesang reappear stripped of all artificiality. More obvious ties with the literature of the preceding age are to be seen in the development of the Schwank or comic anecdote. Collections of such stories, which range from the practical jokes of Till Eulenspiegel (1515), and the coarse witticisms of the Pfaffe vom Kalenberg (end of 14th century) and Peter Leu (1550), to the religious and didactic anecdotes of J. Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst (1522) or the more literary Rollwagenbüchlein (1555) of Jörg Wickram and the Wendunmut (1563 ff.) of H.W. Kirchhoff—these dominate in large measure the literature of the 15th and 16th centuries; they are the literary descendants of the medieval Pfaffe Amis, Markolf and Reinhart Fuchs. An important development of this type of popular literature is to be seen in the Narrenschiff of Sebastian Brant (1457-1521), where the humorous anecdote became a vehicle of the bitterest satire; Brant’s own contempt for the vulgarity of the ignorant, and the deep, unsatisfied craving of all strata of society for a wider intellectual horizon and a more humane and dignified life, to which Brant gave voice, make the Narrenschiff, which appeared in 1494, a landmark on the way that led to the Reformation. Another form—the Beast fable and Beast epic—which is but sparingly represented in earlier times, appealed with peculiar force to the new generation. At the very close of the Middle High German period, Ulrich Boner had revived the Aesopic fable in his Edelstein (1349), translations of Aesop in the following century added to the popularity of the fable (q.v.), and in the century of the Reformation it became, in the hands of Burkard Waldis (Esopus, 1548) and Erasmus Alberus (Buch von der Tugend und Weisheit, 1550), a favourite instrument of satire and polemic. A still more attractive form of the Beast fable was the epic of Reinke de Vos, which had been cultivated by Flemish poets in the 13th and 14th centuries and has come down to us in a Low Saxon translation, published at Lübeck in 1498. This, too, like Brant’s poem, is a powerful satire on human folly, and is also, like the Narrenschiff, a harbinger of the coming Reformation.

A complete innovation was the drama (q.v.), which, as we have seen, had practically no existence in Middle High German times. As in all European literatures, it emerged slowly and with difficulty from its original subservience to the church liturgy. As time went on, the vernacular was substituted for the original Latin, and with increasing demands for pageantry, the scene of the play was removed to the churchyard or the market-place; thus the opportunity arose in the 14th and 15th centuries for developing the Weihnachtsspiel, Osterspiel and Passionsspiel on secular lines. The enlargement of the scope of the religious play to include legends of the saints implied a further step in the direction of a complete separation of the drama from ecclesiastical ceremony. The most interesting example of this encroachment of the secular spirit is the Spiel von Frau Jutten—Jutta being the notorious Pope Joan—by an Alsatian, Dietrich Schernberg, in 1480. Meanwhile, in the 15th century, a beginning had been made of a drama entirely independent of the church. The mimic representations—originally allegorical in character—with which the people amused themselves at the great festivals of the year, and more especially in spring, were interspersed with dialogue, and performed on an improvised stage. This was the beginning of the Fastnachtsspiel or Shrovetide-play, the subject of which was a comic anecdote similar to those of the many collections of Schwänke. Amongst the earliest cultivators of the Fastnachtsspiel were Hans Rosenplüt (fl. c. 1460) and Hans Folz (fl. c. 1510), both of whom were associated with Nuremberg.

(b) The Age of the Reformation.—Promising as were these literary beginnings of the 15th century, the real significance of the period in Germany’s intellectual history is to be sought outside literature, namely, in two forces which immediately prepared the way for the Reformation—mysticism and humanism. The former of these had been a more or less constant factor in German religious thought throughout the middle ages, but with Meister Eckhart (? 1260-1327), the most powerful and original of all the German mystics, with Heinrich Seuse or Suso (c. 1300-1366), and Johannes Tauler (c. 1300-1361), it became a clearly defined mental attitude towards religion; it was an essentially personal interpretation of Christianity, and, as such, was naturally conducive to the individual freedom which Protestantism ultimately realized. It is thus not to be wondered at that we should owe the early translations of the Bible into German—one was printed at Strassburg in 1466—to the mystics. Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg (1445-1510), a pupil of the humanists and a friend of Sebastian Brant, may be regarded as a link between Eckhart and the earlier mysticists and Luther. Humanism was transplanted to German soil with the foundation of the university of Prague in 1348, and it made even greater strides than mysticism. Its immediate influence, however, was restricted to the educated classes; the pre-Reformation humanists despised the vernacular and wrote and thought only in Latin. Thus although neither Johann Reuchlin of Pforzheim (1455-1522), nor even the patriotic Alsatian, Jakob Wimpfeling (or Wimpheling) (1450-1528)—not to mention the great Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536)—has a place in the history of German literature, their battle for liberalism in thought and scholarship against the narrow orthodoxy of the Church cleared the way for a healthy national literature among the German-speaking peoples. The incisive wit and irony of humanistic satire—we need only instance the Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515-1517)—prevented the German satirists of the Reformation age from sinking entirely into that coarse brutality to which they were only too prone. To the influence of the humanists we also owe many translations from the Latin and Italian dating from the 15th century. Prominent among the writers who contributed to the group of literature were Niklas von Wyl, chancellor of Württemberg, and his immediate contemporary Albrecht von Eyb (1420-1475).

Martin Luther (1483-1546), Germany’s greatest man in this age of intellectual new-birth, demands a larger share of attention in a survey of literature than his religious and ecclesiastical activity would in itself justify, if only because the literary activity of the age cannot be regarded apart from him. From the Volkslied and the popular Schwank to satire and drama, literature turned exclusively round the Reformation which had been inaugurated on the 31st of October 1517 by Luther’s publication of the Theses against Indulgences in Wittenberg. In his three tracts, An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation, De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae, and Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (1520), Luther laid down his principles of reform, and in the following year resolutely refused to recant his heresies in a dramatic scene before the Council of Worms. Luther’s Bible (1522-1534) had unique importance not merely for the religious and intellectual welfare of the German people, but also for their literature. It is in itself a literary monument, a German classic, and the culmination and justification of that movement which had supplanted the medieval knight by the burgher and swept away Middle High German poetry. Luther, well aware that his translation of the Bible must be the keystone to his work, gave himself endless pains to produce a thoroughly German work—German both in language and in spirit. It was important that the dialect into which the Bible was translated should be comprehensible over as wide an area as possible of the German-speaking world, and for this reason he took all possible care in choosing the vocabulary and forms of his Gemeindeutsch. The language of the Saxon chancery thus became, thanks to Luther’s initiative, the basis of the modern High German literary language. As a hymn-writer (Geistliche Lieder, 1564), Luther was equally mindful of the importance of adapting himself to the popular tradition; and his hymns form the starting-point for a vast development of German religious poetry which did not reach its highest point until the following century.

The most powerful and virile literature of this age was the satire with which the losing side retaliated on the Protestant leaders. Amongst Luther’s henchmen, Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), the “praeceptor Germaniae,” and Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523) were powerful allies in the cause, but their intellectual sympathies were with the Latin humanists; and with the exception of some vigorous German prose and still more vigorous German verse by Hutten, both wrote in Latin. The satirical dramas of Niklas Manuel, a Swiss writer and the polemical fables of Erasmus Alberus (c. 1500-1553), on the other hand, were insignificant compared with the fierce assault on Protestantism by the Alsatian monk, Thomas Murner (1475-1537). The most unscrupulous of all German satirists, Murner shrank from no extremes of scurrility, his attacks on Luther reaching their culmination in the gross personalities of Von dem lutherischen Narren (1522). It was not until the following generation that the Protestant party could point to a satirist who in genius and power was at all comparable to Murner, namely, to Johann Fischart (c. 1550-c. 1591); but when Fischart’s Rabelaisian humour is placed by the side of his predecessor’s work, we see that, in spite of counter-reformations, the Protestant cause stood in a very different position in Fischart’s day from that which it had occupied fifty years before. Fischart took his stand on the now firm union between humanism and Protestantism. His chief work, the Affentheuerlich Naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung (1575), a Germanization of the first book of Rabelais’ satire, is a witty and ingenious monstrosity, a satirical comment on the life of the 16th century, not the virulent expression of party strife. The day of a personal and brutal type of satire was clearly over, and the writers of the later 16th century reverted more and more to the finer methods of the humanists. The satire of Bartholomaeus Ringwaldt (1530-1599) and of Georg Rollenhagen (1542-1609), author of the Froschmeuseler (1595), was more “literary” and less actual than even Fischart’s.

On the whole, the form of literature which succeeded best in emancipating itself from the trammels of religious controversy in the 16th century was the drama. Protestantism proved favourable to its intellectual and literary development, and the humanists, who had always prided themselves on their imitations of Latin comedy, introduced into it a sense for form and proportion. The Latin school comedy in Germany was founded by J. Wimpfeling with his Stylpho (1470) and by J. Reuchlin with his witty adaptation of Maître Patelin in his Henno (1498). In the 16th century the chief writers of Latin dramas were Thomas Kirchmair or Naogeorgus (1511-1563), Caspar Brülow (1585-1627), and Nikodemus Frischlin (1547-1590), who also wrote dramas in the vernacular. The work of these men bears testimony in its form and its choice of subjects to the close relationship between Latin and German drama in the 16th century. One of the earliest focusses for a German drama inspired by the Reformation was Switzerland. In Basel, Pamphilus Gengenbach produced moralizing Fastnachtsspiele in 1515-1516; Niklas Manuel of Bern (1484-1530)—who has just been mentioned—employed the same type of play as a vehicle of pungent satire against the Mass and the sale of indulgences. But it was not long before the German drama benefited by the humanistic example: the Parabell vam vorlorn Szohn by Burkard Waldis (1527), the many dramas on the subject of Susanna—notably those of Sixt Birck (1532) and Paul Rebhun(1535)—and Frischlin’s German plays are attempts to treat Biblical themes according to classic methods. In another of the important literary centres of the 16th century, however, in Nuremberg, the drama developed on indigenous lines. Hans Sachs (1494-1576), the Nuremberg cobbler and Meistersinger, the most productive writer of the age, went his own way; a voracious reader and an unwearied storyteller, he left behind him a vast literary legacy, embracing every form of popular literature from Spruch and Schwank to complicated Meistergesang and lengthy drama. He laid under contribution the rich Renaissance literature with which the humanistic translators had flooded Germany, and he became himself an ardent champion of the “Wittembergisch Nachtigall” Luther. But in the progressive movement of the German drama he played an even smaller role than his Swiss and Saxon contemporaries; for his tragedies and comedies are deficient in all dramatic qualities; they are only stories in dialogue. In the Fastnachtsspiele, where dramatic form is less essential than anecdotal point and brevity, he is to be seen at his best. Rich as the 16th century was in promise, the conditions for the development of a national drama were unfavourable. At the close of the century the influence of the English drama—brought to Germany by English actors—introduced the deficient dramatic and theatrical force into the humanistic and “narrative” drama which has just been considered. This is to be seen in the work of Jakob Ayrer (d. 1605) and Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick (1564-1613). But unfortunately these beginnings had hardly made themselves felt when the full current of the Renaissance was diverted across Germany, bringing in its train the Senecan tragedy. Then came the Thirty Years’ War, which completely destroyed the social conditions indispensable for the establishment of a theatre at once popular and national.

The novel was less successful than the drama in extricating itself from satire and religious controversy. Fischart was too dependent on foreign models and too erratic—at one time adapting Rabelais, at another translating the old heroic romance of Amadis de Gaula—to create a national form of German fiction in the 16th century; the most important novelist was a much less talented writer, the Alsatian Meistersinger and dramatist Jörg Wickram (d. c. 1560), who has been already mentioned as the author of a popular collection of anecdotes, the Rollwagenbüchlein. His longer novels, Der Knabenspiegel (1554) and Der Goldfaden (1557), are in form, and especially in the importance they attach to psychological developments, the forerunners of the movement to which we owe the best works of German fiction in the 18th century. But Wickram stands alone. So inconsiderable, in fact, is the fiction of the Reformation age in Germany that we have to regard the old Volksbücher as its equivalent; and it is significant that of all the prose writings of this age, the book which affords the best insight into the temper and spirit of the Reformation was just one of these crude Volksbücher, namely, the famous story of the magician Doctor Johann Faust, published at Frankfort in 1587.

IV. The Renaissance (1600-1740)

The 17th century in Germany presents a complete contrast to its predecessor; the fact that it was the century of the Thirty Years’ War, which devastated the country, crippled the prosperity of the towns, and threw back by many generations the social development of the people, explains much, but it can hardly be held entirely responsible for the intellectual apathy, the slavery to foreign customs and foreign ideas, which stunted the growth of the nation. The freedom of Lutheranism degenerated into a paralyzing Lutheran orthodoxy which was as hostile to the “Freiheit eines Christenmenschen” as that Catholicism it had superseded; the idealism of the humanists degenerated in the same way into a dry, pedantic scholasticism which held the German mind in fetters until, at the very close of the century, Leibnitz set it free. Most disheartening of all, literature which in the 16th century had been so full of promise and had conformed with such aptitude to the new ideas, was in all its higher manifestations blighted by the dead hand of pseudo-classicism. The unkempt literature of the Reformation age admittedly stood in need of guidance and discipline, but the 17th century made the fatal mistake of trying to impose the laws and rules of Romance literatures on a people of a purely Germanic stock.

There were, however, some branches of German poetry which escaped this foreign influence. The church hymn, continuing the great Lutheran traditions, rose in the 17th century to extraordinary richness both in quality and quantity. Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676), the greatest German hymn-writer, was only one of many Lutheran pastors who in this age contributed to the German hymnal. On the Catholic side, Angelus Silesius, or Johann Scheffler (1624-1677) showed what a wealth of poetry lay in the mystic speculations of Jakob Boehme, the gifted shoemaker of Görlitz (1575-1624), and author of the famous Aurora, oder Morgenröte im Aufgang (1612); while Friedrich von Spee (1591-1635), another leading Catholic poet of the century, cultivated the pastoral allegory of the Renaissance. The revival of mysticism associated with Boehme gradually spread through the whole religious life of the 17th century, Protestant as well as Catholic, and in the more specifically Protestant form of pietism, it became, at the close of the period, a force of moment in the literary revival. Besides the hymn, the Volkslied, which amidst the struggles and confusion of the great war bore witness to a steadily growing sense of patriotism, lay outside the domain of the literary theorists and dictators, and developed in its own way. But all else—if we except certain forms of fiction, which towards the end of the 17th century rose into prominence—stood completely under the sway of the Latin Renaissance.

The first focus of the movement was Heidelberg, which had been a centre of humanistic learning in the sixteenth century. Here, under the leadership of J.W. Zincgref (1591-1635), a number of scholarly writers carried into practice that interest in the vernacular which had been shown a little earlier by the German translator of Marot, Paul Schede or Melissus, librarian in Heidelberg. The most important forerunner of Opitz was G.R. Weckherlin (1584-1653), a native of Württemberg who had spent the best part of his life in England; his Oden und Gesänge (1618-1619) ushered in the era of Renaissance poetry in Germany with a promise that was but indifferently fulfilled by his successors. Of these the greatest, or at least the most influential, was Martin Opitz (1597-1639). He was a native of Silesia and, as a student in Heidelberg, came into touch with Zincgref’s circle; subsequently, in the course of a visit to Holland, a more definite trend was given to his ideas by the example of the Dutch poet and scholar, Daniel Heinsius. As a poet, Opitz experimented with every form of recognized Renaissance poetry from ode and epic to pastoral romance and Senecan drama; but his poetry is for the most part devoid of inspiration; and his extraordinary fame among his contemporaries would be hard to understand, were it not that in his Buch von der deutschen Poeterey (1624) he gave the German Renaissance its theoretical textbook. In this tract, in which Opitz virtually reproduced in German the accepted dogmas of Renaissance theorists like Scaliger and Ronsard, he not merely justified his own mechanical verse-making, but also gave Germany a law-book which regulated her literature for a hundred years.

The work of Opitz as a reformer was furthered by another institution of Latin origin, namely, literary societies modelled on the Accademia della Crusca in Florence. These societies, of which the chief were the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft or Palmenorden (founded 1617), the Elbschwanenorden in Hamburg and the Gekrönter Blumenorden an der Pegnitz or Gesellschaft der Pegnitzschäfer in Nuremberg, were the centres of literary activity during the unsettled years of the war. Although they produced much that was trivial—such as the extraordinary Nürnberger Trichter (1647-1653) by G.P. Harsdörffer (1607-1658), a treatise which professed to turn out a fully equipped German poet in the space of six hours—these societies also did German letters an invaluable service by their attention to the language, one of their chief objects having been to purify the German language from foreign and un-German ingredients. J.G. Schottelius (1612-1676), for instance, wrote his epoch-making grammatical works with the avowed purpose of furthering the objects of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft. Meanwhile the poetic centre of gravity in Germany had shifted from Heidelberg to the extreme north-east, to Königsberg, where a group of academic poets gave practical expression to the Opitzian theory. Chief among them was Simon Dach (1605-1659), a gentle, elegiac writer on whom the laws of the Buch von der deutschen Poeterey did not lie too heavily. He, like his more manly and vigorous contemporary Paul Fleming (1609-1640), showed, one might say, that it was possible to write good and sincere poetry notwithstanding Opitz’s mechanical rules.

In the previous century the most advanced form of literature had been satire, and under the new conditions the satiric vein still proved most productive; but it was no longer the full-blooded satire of the Reformation, or even the rich and luxuriant satiric fancy of Fischart, which found expression in the 17th century. Satire pure and simple was virtually only cultivated by two Low German poets, J. Lauremberg (1590-1658) and J. Rachel (1618-1669), of whom at least the latter was accepted by the Opitzian school; but the satiric spirit rose to higher things in the powerful and scathing sermons of J.B. Schupp (1610-1661), an outspoken Hamburg preacher, and in the scurrilous wit of the Viennese monk Abraham a Sancta Clara (1644-1709), who had inherited some of his predecessor Murner’s intellectual gifts. Best of all are the epigrams of the most gifted of all the Silesian group of writers, Friedrich von Logau (1604-1655). Logau’s three thousand epigrams (Deutsche Sinngedichte, 1654) afford a key to the intellectual temper of the 17th century; they are the epitome of their age. Here are to be seen reflected the vices of the time, its aping of French customs and its contempt for what was national and German; Logau held up to ridicule the vain bloodshed of the war in the interest of Christianity, and, although he praised Opitz, he was far from prostrating himself at the dictator’s feet. Logau is an epigrammatist of the first rank, and perhaps the most remarkable product of the Renaissance movement in Germany.

Opitz found difficulty in providing Germany with a drama according to the classic canon. He had not himself ventured beyond translations of Sophocles and Seneca, and Johann Rist (1607-1667) in Hamburg, one of the few contemporary dramatists, had written plays more in the manner of Duke Heinrich Julius of Brunswick than of Opitz. It was not until after the latter’s death that the chief dramatist of the Renaissance movement came forward in the person of Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664). Like Opitz, Gryphius also was a Silesian, and a poet of no mean ability, as is to be seen from his lyric poetry; but his tragedies, modelled on the stiff Senecan pattern, suffered from the lack of a theatre, and from his ignorance of the existence of a more highly developed drama in France, not to speak of England. As it was, he was content with Dutch models. In the field of comedy, where he was less hampered by theories of dramatic propriety, he allowed himself to benefit by the freedom of the Dutch farce and the comic effects of the English actors in Germany; in his Horribilicribrifax and Herr Peter Squentz—the latter an adaptation of the comic scenes of the Midsummer Night’s Dream—Gryphius has produced the best German plays of the 17th century.

The German novel of the 17th century was, as has been already indicated, less hampered by Renaissance laws than other forms of literature, and although it was none the less at the mercy of foreign influence, that influence was more varied and manifold in its character. Don Quixote had been partly translated early in the 17th century, the picaresque romance had found its way to Germany at a still earlier date; while H.M. Moscherosch (1601-1669) in his Gesichte Philanders von Sittewald (1642-1643) made the Sueños of Quevedo the basis for vivid pictures of the life of the time, interspersed with satire. The best German novel of the 17th century, Der abenteurliche Simplicissimus (1669) by H.J. Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (c. 1625-1676), is a picaresque novel, but one that owed little more than its form to the Spaniards. It is in great measure the autobiography of its author, and describes with uncompromising realism the social disintegration and the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War. But this remarkable book stands alone; Grimmelshausen’s other writings are but further contributions to the same theme, and he left no disciples worthy of carrying on the tradition he had created. Christian Weise (1642-1708), rector of the Zittau gymnasium, wrote a few satirical novels, but his realism and satire are too obviously didactic. He is seen to better advantage in his dramas, of which he wrote more than fifty for performance by his scholars.

The real successor of Simplicissimus in Germany was the English Robinson Crusoe, a novel which, on its appearance, was immediately translated into German (1721); it called forth an extraordinary flood of imitations, the so-called “Robinsonaden,” the vogue of which is even still kept alive by Der schweizerische Robinson of J.R. Wyss (1812 ff.). With the exception of J.G. Schnabel’s Insel Felsenburg (1731-1743), the literary value of these imitations is slight. They represented, however, a healthier and more natural development of fiction than the “galant” romances which were introduced in the train of the Renaissance movement, and cultivated by writers like Philipp von Zesen (1619-1689), Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick (1633-1714), A.H. Buchholtz (1607-1671), H.A. von Ziegler (1653-1697)—author of the famous Asiatische Banise (1688)—and D.C. von Lohenstein (1635-1683), whose Arminius (1689-1690) is on the whole the most promising novel of this group. The last mentioned writer and Christian Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau (1617-1679) are sometimes regarded as the leaders of a “second Silesian school,” as opposed to the first school of Opitz. As the cultivators of the bombastic and Euphuistic style of the Italians Guarini and Marini, and of the Spanish writer Gongora, Lohenstein and Hofmannswaldau touched the lowest point to which German poetry ever sank.

But this aberration of taste was happily of short duration. Although socially the recovery of the German people from the desolation of the war was slow and laborious, the intellectual life of Germany was rapidly recuperating under the influence of foreign thinkers. Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694), Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) and, above all, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716), the first of the great German philosophers, laid the foundations of that system of rationalism which dominated Germany for the better part of the 18th century; while German religious life was strengthened and enriched by a revival of pietism, under mystic thinkers like Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705), a revival which also left its traces on religious poetry. Such hopeful signs of convalescence could not but be accompanied by an improvement in literary taste, and this is seen in the first instance in a substitution for the bombast and conceits of Lohehstein and Hofmannswaldau, of poetry on the stricter and soberer lines laid down by Boileau. The so-called “court poets” who opposed the second Silesian school, men like Rudolf von Canitz (1654-1699), Johann von Besser (1654-1729) and Benjamin Neukirch (1665-1729), were not inspired, but they had at least a certain “correctness” of taste; and from their midst sprang one gifted lyric genius, Johann Christian Günther (1695-1723), who wrote love-songs such as had not been heard in Germany since the days of the Minnesang. The methods of Hofmannswaldau had obtained considerable vogue in Hamburg, where the Italian opera kept the decadent Renaissance poetry alive. Here, however, the incisive wit of Christian Wernigke’s (1661-1725) epigrams was an effective antidote, and Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1680-1747), a native of Hamburg, who had been deeply impressed by the appreciation of nature in English poetry, gave the artificialities of the Silesians their death-blow. But the influence of English literature was not merely destructive in these years; in the translations and imitations of the English Spectator, Tatler and Guardian—the so-called moralische Wochenschriften—it helped to regenerate literary taste, and to implant healthy moral ideas in the German middle classes.