The Epic Interactive Encyclopedia 1997/The_Epic_Interactive_Encyclopedia_97.iso/g/german_literature/infotext

Text File | 1992-09-03 | 4KB | 85 lines

The most substantial relic of the Old High
German period is the fragmentary alliterative
poem the Hildebrandslied (c.800). In the
Middle High German period there was a
flowering of the vernacular, which had been
forced into subservience to Latin after the
early attempts at encouragement by
Charlemagne. The court epics of Hartmann von
Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Wolfram
von Eschenbach in the early 13th century were
modelled on French style and material, but
the folk-epic, the Nibelungenlied, revived
the spirit of the old heroic Germanic sagas.
Adopted from France and Provence, the
Minnesang reached its height in the lyric
poetry of Walther von der Vogelweide. Modern
German literature begins in the 16th century
with the standard of language set by Luther's
Bible. Also in this century came the climax
of popular drama in the Fastnachtsspiel as
handled by Hans Sachs. In the later 16th and
early 17th centuries French influence was
renewed and English influence, by troupes of
players, was introduced. Martin Opitz's Buch
von der deutschen Poeterey 1624, in which he
advocates the imitation of foreign models,
epitomizes the German Renaissance, which was
followed by the Thirty Years' War, vividly
described in Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus.
In the 18th century French Classicism
predominated, extolled by Gottsched but
opposed by Bodmer and Breitinger, whose
writings prompted the Germanic Messias of
Klopstock. Both Lessing and Herder were
admirers of Shakespeare, and Herder's
enthusiasm inaugurated the Sturm und Drang
phase which emphasized individual
inspiration. His collection of folk songs was
symptomatic of the feeling which inspired
Burger's ballad Lenore. The greatest
representatives of the Classical period at
the end of the century were Goethe and
Schiller, but their ideals were combatted by
the new Romantic school that based its
theories on the work of the brothers
Schlegel, and Tieck, and which included
Novalis, Arnim, Brentano, Eichendorff,
Chamisso, Uhland, and Hoffmann. With Kleist
and Grillparzer in the early 19th century,
stress on the poetic element in drama ended,
and, with Hebbel, the psychological aspect
received greater emphasis. Emerging around
1830 was the `Young German' movement, led by
Heine, Gutzkow, and Laube, which the
authorities tried to suppress. Other
19th-century writers include Jeremias
Gotthelf, who recounted stories of peasant
life; the psychological novelist Friedrich
Spielhagen; poets and novella-writers
Gottfried Keller and Theodor Storm; and the
realist novelists Wilhelm Raabe and Theodor
Fontane. Naturalistic drama found its chief
exponents in Hauptmann and Sudermann.
Influential in literature, as in politics and
economics, were Marx and Nietzsche.
Outstanding writers of the early 20th century
included the lyric poets Richard Dehmel,
Stefan George, and Rainer Maria Rilke; the
poet and dramatist von Hofmannsthal; and the
novelists Thomas and Heinrich Mann, E M
Remarque, and Hermann Hesse. Just before
World War I Expressionism emerged in the
poetry of Georg Trakl. It dominated the
novels of Franz Kafka and the plays of Ernst
Toller, Franz Werfel, Georg Kaiser and Karl
Sternheim, and was later to influence Bertolt
Brecht. Under Nazism many major writers left
the country, while others were silenced or
ignored. After World War II came the Swiss
dramatists Max Frisch and Friedrich
Durrenmatt, the novelists Heinrich Boll,
Christa Wolf, and Siegfried Lenz, the poet
Paul Celan, and the poet/novelist Gunter
Grass.