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187 



paladins, and Kim; Arthur and his kni-lii-, and of 

 tin' Sangrael ; and it is t-> this period that we must 

 ivl'er tne Nibelui'i/tn /./>>/ and <! nilnin, which rank 

 as the greatest treasures of German national litera- 

 ture. It WHS to these tales of 1'arzival, Lohengrin, 

 and the Nilielungen tliat Kichard Wagner turned 

 in lii> efforts to create a national school of music- 

 drama in tin- I'.Mh centui v. Antony the \\\-\ 

 successful romantic ami e,iic poets and itiinni> 

 singers l>elongiiig to the Swabian period we 

 may specially indicate Heinrich von Veldekc, 

 (<iit (fried of Strasburg, Ulrich von Lichtenstein, 

 Hartmann von der Am-, N rid hart of Bavaria, 

 Wolfram von Eschenhach, Walther von der Vogel- 

 and Heinrich von Oftordingen. The 

 ' 



AY/.</ iinf ,I>T ll'tirtburg, whicli has heen claused 

 among the didactic poems of this age, relate* a 

 mythical contest of poetic skill l>etween the three 

 last named. The taste for the Tkier-epos received 

 a new impetus among the people in the middle 

 of the 12th century by the re-translation, from the 

 French into German, of the ancient poem of 

 Reinlmnl A'w/i.v, which, according to the distin- 

 guished philologist Jakob Grimm, originated with 

 the Frankish tribes, who carried it with them when 

 they crossed the Rhine and founded an empire 

 in Gaul, and from whom it was diffused among 

 the neighbouring tribes of northern France and 

 Flanders. German now began to be used for 

 public proclamations and in collections of laws, 

 of which the Sachsenspiegel (1230) and the 

 Schwabenspiegel (1270) are the most noteworthy. 



The period which succeeded the decline of 

 chivalry was marked by a thorough neglect, 

 among the higher classes, of national literature, 

 which thus fell into the hands of the people. 

 Yet some few chronicles, among which may 

 be mentioned those of Limburg, Alsace, and 

 Thuringia, were composed in the century from 1330 

 to 1430. This was the age of the Meistersanger, or 

 artisan-poets, who formed themselves into guilds 

 like their trade guilds, and composed their verses 

 in conformity with the strict guild rules. ' Meister- 

 gesang' was at its zenith at the era of the 

 Reformation ; its most famous representative was 

 Hans Sachs, the shoemaker of Nuremberg, who 

 also wrote epics, fables, and dialogue -pieces. The 

 most honourable place among the pioneer cultiva- 

 tors of German prose-writing belongs to Meister 

 Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, and their followers, the 

 mystics. To this age belongs also a great mass 

 of the Volkslieder, or national ballads, in which 

 Germany is specially rich ; the fables and satires of 

 Brandt ( Narrenschiff, or Ship of Fools) and Miirner, 

 and the romances of the satirist Johann Fischart. 

 Most of the Volksbiicher too, such as Die Melusine, 

 Die Haimonskimler, Kaiser Octavianus, Wigalois, 

 Tyll Euletispiegel, Dr Faust, and Die Schildburger, 

 were written in the loth and 16th centuries to meet 

 the demand of the people for imaginative literature. 

 The mysteries and passion-plays, which were at 

 their height in the 15th century, and still linger at 

 Oberammergau, in Upper Bavaria, and one or two 

 other places, may be said to have given origin to 

 the German drama, which numbered among its 

 earliest cultivators Sachs, Rebhuhn, and Ayrer. 

 The close of the 15th century produced several 

 satires on the clergy and numerous theological 

 writings for and against the tottering power of the 

 Romish Church. 



The writings of Luther, particularly his trans- 

 lation of the Bible, which fixed a literary language 

 for the Germans, and the works of Ulrich von 

 Hutten, Zwingli, and of many of the other reformers, 

 were, however, the most important events in the 

 history of German literature from the close of the 

 15th to the middle of the 16th century. But Luther 

 addressed himself to the minds of his countrymen 



not merely through lib polemical writing*, but aUo 

 by thone noble hymns which, since hi* day, have 

 constituted one of tin- greatest literary treasure* 

 of the kind. Many beautiful Ktn-hw-lieder, or 

 i-li nidi songs, were composed during the next 

 centuries; to the 17th belong thorn; of Orhardt, 

 Franck, and Scheftjer, who may le counted among 

 the best hymn- writers of Germany. Nor Hhould 

 the Roman Catholic hymns of Angelus KilcsiuM lie 

 passed over. The example of Luther a* a writer of 

 prose German was laudably followed by Sebastian 

 Franck in his historical books, by the mystic 

 Jacob Bohme, and Arndt, the most widely read 

 religious writer of the 16th century. 



The fervent effusions of the devout and elo- 

 quent reformers were followed by a i>eriod of 

 literary degeneration and stagnation, which i- in 

 a great measure to be ascrilieu to the demoralising 

 effects of the Thirty Years' War, when Germany 

 was a prey to all the evils inseparable from civil 

 strife, fostered by foreign interference. The indirect 

 result of this period of anarchy was to quench the 

 national spirit and vitiate the popular taste ; for, 

 while the petty courts aped the habits, language, 

 and literature of Versailles, the lower orders forgot 

 their own literature, with its rich treasures of 

 legends, tales, and ballads, and acquired a taste for 

 the coarse camp-songs imported by foreign mercen 

 aries, and the immoral romances borrowed from 

 impure French and Italian sources. Almost the 

 only names that break this barren wilderness are 

 Moscherosch, a satirist ; Grimmelshausen, who has 

 left vigorous pictures of the Thirty Years' \Var ; 

 and Abraham a Sancta Clara, a satirical preacher, 

 possessed of both wit and humour. 



What is known as the first Silesian school of 

 German poetry was formed under the influence of 

 the correct but cold Opitz (1597-1639) ; and he was 

 staunchly supported by the Ivric poet Fleming and 

 the epigrammatist Logau. The succeeding second 

 Silesian school, headed by Hoffman von Hoflrnans- 

 waldau, sought inspiration in the inferior Italian 

 poets, and produced affected and extravagant 

 pastorals. But, on the whole, the study of the 

 national literature was neglected, and, although 

 a host of learned societies were formed whose 

 professed object was to purify and elevate the 

 public taste, the results were lamentably unsatis- 

 factory. The poems of Hagedorn (1708-54) and 

 Haller (1708-77) struck a truer and more natural 

 note. But it was not till Gotteched (1705-66) 

 succeeded, in his Critical Art of Poetry, in draw- 

 ing attention to the turgid pedantry and artificial 

 stiffness of the classicist school that a better taste 

 was awakened. In opposition to the Leipzig school, 

 of which Gottsched was the centre, there arose the 

 Swiss or Zurich school, in which Bodmer and Breit- 

 inger were the leaders. An adverse criticism by 

 Gottsched of Bodmer's translation of Paradise Lost 

 precipitated a controversy, known as the Bodmer 

 Streit. The Leipzig school attached all importance 

 to the purely intellectual and mechanical correct- 

 ness of poetry ; while Bodmer and his disciples 

 considered rather the imaginative and emotional 

 elements. As more or less the outcome of this con- 

 test arose the Saxon school, the leading meml>er of 

 which was the hymn-writer and fabulist Gellert, 

 wlio for some years posed as the literary dictator of 

 Germany ; the Halle school with Gleim at its head ; 

 and the German a-sthetic school, under the guidance 

 of A. Baumgarten. 



In the end of the 17th century German philo- 

 sophy first lifted up its heat! " in the writings 

 of Leibnitz, C. Wolf, and Thomasius. RaWner 

 and other contributors to the Bremer Beitraoe, 

 a group of Ivric and dramatic writers wno 

 flourished in tlie Inhuming >f the IStli century. 

 were perhaps the first to bring literature 



