German literature

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The Frankfurt Book Fair

German literature (

Alemannic
).

Medieval German literature is

Goethe's best-selling The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). The Sturm und Drang and Weimar Classicism movements were led by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. German Romanticism
was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Nazi regime, some authors went into exile (Exilliteratur) and others submitted to censorship ("internal emigration", Innere Emigration). The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to German language authors fourteen times (as of 2023), or the third most often, behind only French language authors (with 16 laureates) and English language authors (with 32 laureates) with winners including Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Günter Grass, and Peter Handke
.

Periodization

medieval
German literature span two or three centuries, those of early modern German literature span one century, and those of modern German literature each span one or two decades. The closer one nears the present, the more debated the periodizations become.

Graph of works listed in Frenzel, Daten deutscher Dichtung (1953). Visible is medieval literature overlapping with Renaissance up to the 1540s, modern literature beginning 1720, and baroque-era works (1570 to 1730) in between; there is a 20-year gap, 1545–1565, separating the Renaissance from the Baroque era.
The Diagram was first published in Olaf Simons, Marteaus Europa, oder Der Roman, bevor er Literatur wurde (Amsterdam/ Atlanta: Rodopi, 2001), p. 12. It does not give a picture of the actual production of German literature, but the selection and classification of literary works by Herbert Alfred and Elizabeth Frenzel.[1]

Middle Ages

Medieval German literature refers to

Reformation
(1517) being the last possible cut-off point.

Old High German

Main article: Old High German literature

The Old High German period is reckoned to run until about the mid-11th century, though the boundary to Early Middle High German (second half of the 11th century) is not clear-cut.

The most famous work in OHG is the Hildebrandslied, a short piece of Germanic alliterative heroic verse which besides the Muspilli is the sole survivor of what must have been a vast oral tradition. Another important work, in the northern dialect of Old Saxon, is a life of Christ in the style of a heroic epic known as the Heliand.

Middle High German

Main article: Middle High German literature

heroic epics are written in rhymed strophes, not the alliterative verse of Germanic prehistory (for example, the Nibelungenlied
).

The Middle High German period is conventionally taken to end in 1350, while the

The Ring (c. 1410), the poems of Oswald von Wolkenstein and Johannes von Tepl, the German versions of Pontus and Sidonia, and arguably the works of Hans Folz and Sebastian Brant (Ship of Fools, 1494), among others. The Volksbuch (chapbook
) tradition which would flourish in the 16th century also finds its origin in the second half of the 15th century.

Early Modern period

Further information:
Early Modern history of Germany, and Early New High German

German Renaissance and Reformation

Main article: Early New High German literature
Reformation-era literature
Overview
British


  • Pastoral
  • Morality
  • History
  • Tragedy
  • Revenge
    		•
    Continental

    Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age

    Folklore of the Low Countries
    Scandinavian
    Further information:
    Protestant Reformation
    Further information: Early New High German

    Baroque period

    The Baroque period (1600 to 1720) was one of the most fertile times in German literature. Many writers reflected the horrible experiences of the

    Anton Ulrich and edited by Sigmund von Birken.[3][4]

    18th century

    The Enlightenment

    Further information:
    The Enlightenment

    Sensibility

    Empfindsamkeit / Sensibility (1750s–1770s)

    Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
    (1774).

    Sturm und Drang

    Main article: Sturm und Drang

    Sturm und Drang (the conventional translation is "Storm and Stress"; a more literal translation, however, might be storm and urge, storm and longing, or storm and impulse) is the name of a movement in German literature and

    aesthetic movements. The philosopher Johann Georg Hamann is considered to be the ideologue of Sturm und Drang, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a notable proponent of the movement, though he and Friedrich Schiller ended their period of association with it, initiating what would become Weimar Classicism
    .

    19th century

    German Classicism

    Main article: Weimar Classicism

    Weimar Classicism (

    Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
    during the period 1786 to 1805.

    Romanticism

    German Classicism or Weimar Classicism, which it opposed. In contrast to the seriousness of English Romanticism, the German variety is notable for valuing humor and wit as well as beauty. The early German romantics tried to create a new synthesis of art, philosophy, and science, looking to the Middle Ages as a simpler, more integrated period. As time went on, however, they became increasingly aware of the tenuousness of the unity they were seeking. Later German Romanticism emphasized the tension between the everyday world and the seemingly irrational and supernatural projections of creative genius. Heinrich Heine
    in particular criticized the tendency of the early romantics to look to the medieval past for a model of unity in art and society.

    Biedermeier and Vormärz

    Vienna Congress), the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and 1848, the year of the European revolutions and contrasts with the Romantic era which preceded it. Typical Biedermeier poets are Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Adelbert von Chamisso, Eduard Mörike, and Wilhelm Müller, the last three named having well-known musical settings by Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf and Franz Schubert
    respectively.

    Italy). Its main proponents were Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg; Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne and Georg Büchner were also considered part of the movement. The wider circle included Willibald Alexis, Adolf Glassbrenner and Gustav Kühne
    .

    Realism and Naturalism

    Poetic

    Gustav Freitag, Gottfried Keller, Wilhelm Raabe, Adalbert Stifter, Theodor Storm

    Naturalism (1880–1900): Gerhart Hauptmann

    20th century

    1900 to 1933

    Well known writers of the 20th century

    A well-known writer of

    German literature was Franz Kafka. A Kafka novel, The Trial, was ranked #3 on Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century.[5] Kafka's iconic writing style that captures themes of bureaucracy and existentialism resulted in the coining of the term “Kafkaesque.”[6] Kafka's writing allowed a peek into his melancholic life, one where he felt isolated from all human beings, one of his inspirations for writing.[7]

    Nazi Germany

    • National Socialist literature: see
      Nazi propaganda

    Under the Nazi regime, some authors went into exile (Exilliteratur) and others submitted to censorship ("inner emigration", Innere Emigration)

    1945 to 1989

    21st century

    Frankfurt Book Fair 2016

    Much of contemporary poetry in the German language is published in literary magazines.

    DAS GEDICHT
    , for instance, has featured German poetry from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Luxemburg for the last twenty years.

    Nobel Prize laureates

    Further information: Nobel Prize in Literature

    The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to German-language authors fourteen times (as of 2020), tying with French-language authors, or the second most often after English-language authors (with 32).

    The following writers are from Germany unless stated otherwise:

    Thomas Mann
    (1875–1955)     		Hermann Hesse
    (1877–1962)

    See also

    References

    1. Nazi era has been criticized as "grotesque" or as exhibiting "bizarre gaps" (viz. omitting Jewish authors); see Volker Weidermann, Ein grotesker Kanon, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
      , 11 May 2009. Daten deutscher Dichtung was reprinted in 35 editions, but was discontinued in 2009.
    2. OCLC 22567416
      .
    3. ISBN 978-1-57113-510-0
      .
    4. ISBN 978-0-521-65628-3
      .
    5. ^ "Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century by Le Monde - The Greatest Books". thegreatestbooks.org. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
    6. ^ "Why Kafka Still Matters | Psychology Today". www.psychologytoday.com. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
    7. ^ "Franz Kafka Biography". Encyclopedia Britannica.
    8. ^ Cuadra, P. V. (2010). "Las traducciones al español de literatura intercultural alemana". Revista de Filología Alemana: 301–309.
    9. ^ Twenty-Third Annual Bibliography, Archived 15 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature at the Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri, Retrieved 13 December 2011

    Literature

    English

    • Cambridge History of German Literature. Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen, ed. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
    • Konzett, Matthias Piccolruaz. Encyclopedia of German Literature. Routledge, 2000.
    • The Oxford Companion to German Literature, ed. by Mary Garland and Henry Garland, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 1997
    • Grange, William, ed. Historical dictionary of German literature to 1945 (2011) online
    • Van Cleve, John W. (1986). The Merchant in German Literature of the Enlightenment. Chapel Hill.
    • Van Cleve, John W. (1991). The Problem of Wealth in the Literature of Luther's Germany. Camden House.
    • Ed.: Alexandra Merley Hill, Hester Baer. German Women's Writing in the Twenty-first Century. United Kingdom, Camden House, 2015.

    German

    Anthologies

    External links

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