GERMANY. (LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.) 



431 



here. The mass of the terrible stories of knignts, 

 ghosts, and robbers, which used to fill the circulating 

 libraries, and the imagination of the middle classes of 

 readers, must not be forgotten. Spiess and Cramer 

 were two of the principal writers of works of this 

 class. The scientific and critical German prose 

 writers are mentioned under the articles German 

 Literature, German Criticism, &c. There remain to 

 be mentioned the authors distinguished by their style 

 as historical writers Spittler, Heeren, Eichhorn, 

 Job. Muller, Job. N. Voigt, Posselt, Schiller, Wolt- 

 maiin, Plank, Luden, Politz ; as philosophical writers, 

 Kant, Heidenreich, Fichte (in particular in his ad- 

 dresses to the German nation), Schelling (for instance, 

 his Discourse on the Relation of Nature to the Plas- 

 cic Art), Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Steffens (On the 

 Present Age), Winckelmann (died 1768), Justus 

 Moser (died 1794), Helf. Peter Sturz (died 1799), 

 Johann Kasp. Lavater (died 1801), George Forster, 

 traveller and political writer, Lichtenberg, a man of 

 striking wit, and a caustic mind, best known by his 

 illustrations of Hogarth's caricatures, Sulzer (died 

 1779, author of the Theory of the Fine Arts), Thorn. 

 Abbt (died 1776), Garve (died 1798), Moses Men- 

 delssohn, but, above all, Lessing, the two Schlegels, 

 in particular A. W. Schlegel, Koppen, the truly 

 popular Claudius (Wandsbecker Bote), Voss, Arndt, 

 Gorres, and others ; in the proper oratory style, Ged- 

 ike, -Niemeyer, Jacobs, Delbruck ; in the treatment 

 of particular branches of science, Feuerbach, Zacha- 

 ria ; in the picturesque description of nature, Hum- 

 boldt, Zimmermann. 



German Poetry. If, under the name German 

 poetry, we include all the poetical productions of the 

 nation, from the earliest time to the present day, it 

 will be difficult to describe it by any general term, 

 as its tendencies have been so different at different 

 times. But, excluding everything foreign, every 

 mere accidental modification, we shall find that Ger- 

 man poetry is characterized by depth of feeling, truth, 

 and a reflecting spirit, clothed in a strong, pictu- 

 resque, and expressive language. The history of 

 German poetry may be divided into three periods, 

 according to the divisions made in art. German lite- 

 rature. 



I. The heroic songs of the ancient Germans, of 

 which Tacitus speaks, are lost. They served as 

 chronicles to a nation ignorant of the art of writing, 

 and preserved the memory of their heroes and princes. 

 It has been conjectured that the songs which Charle- 

 magne caused to be collected and written out, were 

 of this kind, but without sufficient grounds. If any 

 of those productions are extant, the fragment from 

 the song of Hildebrand, published by the brothers 

 Grimm, from a manuscript in Cassel (1812), must be 

 reckoned among them. During the period imme- 

 diately succeeding the introduction of Christianity 

 into Germany, German poetry consisted merely of 

 translations and paraphrases from the Bible, valuable 

 only as monuments of the language. Ottfried's 

 Harmony of the Gospels, in rhyme, written in the 

 time of Louis the German, is the most important of 

 these biblical poems. The earliest German ballad 

 celebrates the victory of Louis III., king of Neus- 

 tria, over the Normans (881). From the time of the 

 emperor Henry IV., we have the hymn in honour of 

 his tutor, St Anno, archbishop of Cologne, in the 

 dialect of the lower Rhine. In the other poems 

 which we have mentioned, the Upper German dialect, 

 particularly the Franconian, prevails. 



II. The reign of the Suabian emperors of the 

 Hohenstaufen family is included in the first division 

 of this period. It is the age of the poetry of chivalry 

 and of the Minnesingers, and is usually called the 

 Suabian age, in the history of poetry, on account of 



the Suabian origin, both of the Hohenstaufen empv 

 rors and the best poets of the time, and on account 

 of the universal prevalence of the Suabian dialect, 

 which was the richest and most cultivated, as th 

 language of poetry. 1'he increasing cultivation of 

 Germany, arising from the growing wealth which 

 commerce and foreign conquests had produced ; its 

 connexions with Italy and France, in particular, from 

 the time of the residence of Frederic Barbarossa in 

 Provence ; the crusades, which kindled the spirit of 

 chivalry to a romantic enthusiasm ; the taste for the 

 arts cherished by the Hohenstaufen race, combined 

 with other causes to promote the rapid develop- 

 ment of poetry in this period. German emperors 

 and princes were themselves Minnesingers (q. v.) ; 

 their courts resounded with the notes of wandering 

 minstrels, and poetical games alternated with tour- 

 naments. The example of the princes was imitated 

 by the nobles, and poetry thus became an essential 

 element in the life of the higher classes. The series 

 of Minnesingers, that is, amatory poets, begins with 

 Henry of Veldeck (1170) ; and the names of almost 

 300 poets, who, during this short period, sang of love, 

 the ladies, and the honours of knighthood, are known 

 to us. A collection made by Rudiger von Manessa, 

 in 1313, contains the works of 140 of them (Zurich, 

 1758 59, 2 vols., 4to). The most celebrated are 

 Wolfram of Eschenbach, Walter von der Vogelweide, 

 Henry of Ofterdingen, Hartmann of Aue, Ulric of 

 Lichtenstein, Godfrey of Strasburg ; and one of the 

 latest is Conrad of Wurtzburg. Most of the Minne- 

 singers confined themselves to the subject which their 

 name denotes. They sang of love and of their ladies 

 in lyric strains, full of delicate, deep, and animated 

 feeling, and, at the same time, witli few exceptions, 

 with great purity of feeling. Many of them also 

 wrote epics. The national tales are often wrought 

 from traditions of the old times of paganism, and 

 relate to the storms and wanderings of the nation, at 

 the period of the overthrow of the Western Empire. 

 The principal heroes of these stories are Attila, the 

 king of the Huns, and Theodoric, king of the Ostro- 

 goths. The principal poems of this kind are the 

 Niebelungenlied (q. v.), a romantic epic of great 

 merit, both in regard to the plan and execution ; and 

 the Heldenbuch (q. v.), composed by different authors, 

 and founded on traditions of the highest antiquity. 

 The foreign materials are mostly of the Provengal, 

 Norman, and British origin. They consist of tradi- 

 tions relating to Charlemagne and his paladins, and 

 king Arthur and his round table, and the san graal 

 (the plate from which the Saviour ate the last sup- 

 per, and which afterwards received his blood). 

 Among the poems of this series, are Wolfram of 

 Eschenbach's Markgraf von Narbonne, Titurel, and 

 Parcival ; Godfrey of Strasburg's Tristan; Hart- 

 mann's Iwain, and many others. The Roman and 

 Greek antiquity and history also furnished materials, 

 which were, however, arrayed in the dress of mo- 

 dern chivalry. Henry of Veldeck's Eneid, and the 

 Trojan War, by Conrad of Wurtzburg, are of this 

 kind. With Rodolph of Hapsburg, and the tur- 

 bulent times of feudal violence, began the decline 

 of genuine chivalry in Germany, and of the poetry 

 which sprang from it, and was dependent on it. In 

 the period of transition from the poetry of the Min- 

 nesingers, and of chivalry, to that of the Mastersin- 

 gers and of civic life, are found some didactic and 

 satirical works, as Der Renner of Hugh of Irymberg 

 (in 1300), and the fables of Boner, entitled Der EdeU 

 stein (1324). About the middle of the fourteenth 

 century, the schools of the Mastersingers wera 

 formed, particularly in the cities of Mentz, Nurem- 

 berg, and Strasburg. These schools partook of the 

 nature of academies and of guildt, and the art of 



