Literature of German language

This article relates to the Germanic literature which gathers the German whole of literary works of language E. The Germanic literature is not limited to the literature produced in Germany but includes that produced in Austria like in part of the Suisse. In this literature, there are not only the poems and novels which are taken into account, of the writings on the history of the literature, philosophical, bearing on social sciences or a diary or an exchange of letters can concern the literature.

The beginning and one period literary end are always very difficult to delimit. The times are classified below in the chronological order (start date of the period). It is thus possible to see the interdependences and relations between the various literary currents of the same period.

Literary times and currents

The Middle Ages

One of the texts oldest (in althochdeutsch , “old man high German”) date of the IX or Xe century: they are the magic Formules of Merseburg ( Merseburger Zaubersprüche ), two formulas in German language which represent for the moment the only literary contributions of the pagan culture in the Germanic countries. Certain songs of hero (also in althochdeutsch ) would be however even older like the song of Hildebrand ( Hildebrandslied ).

In XIIe and XIIIe centuries, the literature of court on the model of that existing then in France makes its appearance in mittelhochdeutsch (“average high German”, designates German of the period 1050-1350). Most known are Erec (of Hartmann von Aue), Tristan and Iseult ( Tristan und Isolde of Gottfried von Strassburg), Perceval ( Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach) and the Nibelungenlied as well as the song of Walther von der Vogelweide. At the beginning of XIVe century, the work of Maître Eckhart founds an important mystical literature, also represented by Tauler and Suso.

A worthy work to hold the attention is Der Ackermann aus Böhme of Johannes von Tepl, a dialog between a farmer and the devil consigned in writing to XVe century. the Nave of Insane the of Sebastien Brant, printed in 1498 and illustrated by To last, is the most popular work of its time.

Humanism and Reform

Baroque (about 1600-1720)

The literature Baroque is marked by the Guerre Thirty Year old, whose novel emblematic, picaresque and truculent, is the adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus of Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen. It results in an exacerbation of the feelings, the emotions going up until the extreme.

The poets are then the noble ones or middle-class rich person, sometimes of the monks or tutors, who turn to the literature in their spare time. There existed also poets employed at the court who had the same social status more or less as the “insane one of the king”.

The first women appear in literature at that time, the majority publishing however under a pseudonym. They belong to the many circles of poets and various literary academies such as for example the princess of Saxony Maria Antonia Walpurgis.

The most used poetic form was the Sonnet whose form is: two Quatrain S, two Tercet S.

Among the German poets the most important baroques, one can note: Abraham has Santa Clara, Sigmund von Birken, Barthold Hinrich Brockes, Simon Dach, Paul Fleming, Andreas Gryphius, Johann Christian Günther, Friedrich von Logau, Johann Michael Moscherosch, Martin Opitz, Christian Weise.

The Lights (1720-1785)

The Lumières are a European phenomenon. Over this time and the ideas which characterize it, to see the Age of Enlightenment. In Germany, its most important representative is without any doubt Immanuel Kant which wrote inter alia: Answer to the question: “What Lights?”. Mendelssohn, Jacobi also made important contributions there.

The philosophers of this time were deeply convinced that the progress of humanity rested on the training and the education of each one. Two important philosophical currents cohabit to form the “Lights”: the Empirisme (of England) according to which knowledge rests on the perception of the directions and the Rationalisme (of France) according to which knowledge results from the use of the capacities of reflection of the reason. All the life is perceived like a process of training.

An important work in Germany: “Nathan der Weise” of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

" Sturm und Drang" (about 1765-1785)

Sturm und Drang is a literary movement protestor of second half of the 18th century, named thus according to a part of Friedrich Maximilian Klinger. The core of this movement is a youth which revolts against the structure of the company dominated by the nobility and the middle-class and against the middle-class moral principles which reign there.

The heroes of the parts and novels of this movement try to break conventions and the representations morals. They create their own rules based on justice and freedom.

The emblematic figures of this movement are Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller. the sufferings of the young person Werther ( Die Leiden of the jungen Werthers ) of Goethe is the key novel of this movement. One can also note Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz as well as other brought together authors with Göttingen.

The cities carrying this movement were Göttingen, Strasbourg like Francfort-sur-le-Main.

" Weimarer Klassik" (Classicism of Weimar) (about 1786-1805)

This term indicates in German literature the time starting after the voyage of Goethe in Italy in 1786. It lasts until about 1805. This period recuts the period of creation of Goethe and Schiller then friendly (1794-1805).

In the center of this concept of art the will of harmony and flattening of the opposites is. One refers to the classic art and with his ideal of beauty, one seeks the adequacy between the funds and the form. Goethe seeks in the Nature a model for the universal interactions of the whole of the existing things, Schiller made of the Histoire the central point of any thing.

Romanticism (about 1796-1835)

Biedermeier (about 1815-1848)

The term Biedermeier indicates the period of the restoration between 1815 and 1848. This name comes from the poet Gottlieb Biedermeier. The concept returns to a certain art of the small-middle-class. In literature, this art is regarded as provincial, of an infantile esthetism and sweating the finer feelingss.

This Austrian literary period is made of an art of poor quality but which gave, by its style without originality and its stories of a frightening flatness, an entertainment appreciated with the middle-class men of the Empire. Some authors as Johann Nestroy nevertheless knew to play on the two tables while presenting on a side of the popular parts, but also by instilling a new causticity into it.

One remembers with difficulty the authors who knew their hour of glory at that time: Gottlieb Biedermeier, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Wilhelm Hauff, Karl Leberecht Immermann, Eduard Mörike, Ferdinand Raimund, Friedrich Rückert.

For the same period of other writers are distinguished nevertheless and remained in the Pantheon of the Germanic letters like the poet Nikolaus Lenau, the playwright Franz Grillparzer or the writer Adalbert Stifter.

" Vormärz" (about 1830-1850) and “Junges Deutschland”

This time lies between the Congress of Vienna of 1815 and the revolution of March 1848. In literature, this period starts only as from 1830. The movement “Junges Deutschland” enters then in opposition to the restoration. The principal representatives of this current are: Georg Büchner, Heinrich Heine, Christian Dietrich Grabbe, Ludwig Börne, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben and Georg Herwegh. They fought against the very preserving policy of Metternich and the princes. They wanted to obtain the democracy, freedom, social justice… Their writings are prohibited of publication by decree of the Bundestag of Frankfurt for all Germany from 1835/1836.

Poetic Realism (1848-1890)

In poetic realism, the authors avoid the major problems socio-policies and turn to the narrower circle of their country of origin them inhabitants and their landscapes. In the center of the novels, parts and poems is the individual. A characteristic of these works is the frequent use of the humor which creates a distance compared to an unbearable reality. It points the defects and weaknesses of one of the links of the company without to attack the system. The preferred literary form is the news which reaches its glory at that time.

Some outstanding works: “Frau Jenny Treibel” of Theodor Fontane, “Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe” of Gottfried Keller, “Das Amulett” of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, “Der Schimmelreiter” of Theodor Storm and “Nachsommer” of Adalbert Stifter.

The Naturalism (1880-1900)

The naturalism was an art nouveau, a new direction in literature, which wanted to discover without cares the reports/ratios in all the fields of the company. What the realistic ones in the middle of the century still rejected finds now in the center of the concerns. Without regards for the traditional limits of the good taste and the artistic middle-class designs, reality is made such as it is, raw, without embellishments. An artistic innovation which results from this is the appearance of the jargon, the dialects or the language of the every day in literary works. The individual hero who chooses freely is not any more in the center of the narrations, from now on, it is introduced there determined by his medium, his origins and the circumstances temporal.

With the difference of the Russian and French literature, there is no novel significant naturalist in the literature of German language.

Some important works: “Frühlings Erwachen” of Frank Wedekind, “Bahnwärter Thiel” of Gerhart Hauptmann and especially “Tristan” and “Der Tod in Venedig” (Death in Venice) of Thomas Mann.

Impressionism (about 1890-1910)

" Heimatkunst"

The “Heimatkunst” (“art of the fatherland”) is to be put in close relationship with the naturalism. The principal propagandist of this new movement is the writer and historian of the art Adolf Bartels which uses the concept of “Heimatkunst” for the first time in 1898 in an article for the magazine “Der Kunstwart”. He spreads the new ideas and designs with Friedrich Lienhard in the magazine “Heimat” which will appear in Berlin only very little time.

This new movement wanted to deviate from the subject of the big city to turn to the country, the fatherland and the people. The use of the term “Heimat” however makes it possible not to be confined with the life of countryside, the town life can be also approached since the city can be also a place of origin. As the naturalism from which it borrows various techniques, the “Heimatkunst” is not satisfied to express its love of the country, it criticizes also its lacks, its defects… Current research on this movement tends to show that some of the basic ideas of this movement are same as those of the ecomovement which will appear later.

Some important works:

Julius Langbehn, “Rembrandt als Erzieher” (1890)
Adolf Bartels, “Heimatkunst. Ein Wort zur Verständigung” (1902)
Wilhelm von Polenz, " Der Büttnerbauer" (1895)

Jugendstil

" Klassische Moderne" (about 1900 - the Twenties of XXe S.)

For the “Modern Klassische” (“traditional modernity”), the concept of Avant-garde is particularly important. This time starts at the end of the XIXe century with the symbolism French and of the poets like Stephan Mallarmé, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. The most important representatives of symbolism in German language are Stefan George, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke.

This movement includes as well the Surréalisme, the Dadaïsme, the Expressionnisme that the Futurisme. In Germany, the Nazism (at the European level, the Second world war) causes a caesura in these movements generally indicated under the term of avant-garde.

The literature of avant-garde wants to be to be a literature directed towards the innovation and very related to the theory. The dadaïstes are thus tried to be sharp with their public with middle-class formation in their proposer a literature of nonsense. The Wiener Aktionismus had chosen as not attack the “good taste” and caused through extreme performances.

Parallel to these currents directed against the tradition, there were also works which regained the old shapes and Re-developed them like Rainer Maria Rilke with her novel “Die Aufzeichnungen of Malta Laurids Brigge” (1910), Heinrich Mann (whose beginnings prepared the way with the expressionnists), Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Robert Musil and Franz Kafka.

In particular and relating to Thomas Mann, the shape of its works falls under the continuity of a romantic movement inherited the Lights, a romanticism of first time to some extent, considering with as much importance all the aspects different from the knowledge; thus, “the magic Mountain” teaches us all on the pulmonary medicine, while in “Doctor Faustus”, it is serial music or dodecaphonic of which it is question. In parallel of the screen of the history that it tells us, and when this last effleure one of the facets of the knowledge, emerge then that and there of the digressions not leaving anything randomly and who would satisfy any specialist, as fastidious as it is…

Astonishing and powerful the poetic meteor Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914) can line up with difficulty in a category: at the same time precursory of surrealism, of lettrisme ( die large Lullabi ), he sees assembling the disaster of the First World War, has a presentiment of the cataclism of the second and suggests, in reaction to emergent cruelties, a return to the values of the spirit of which he is made the cantor. ( Wir fanden einen Pfad )

Expressionnism (about 1910-1920)

Dadaism (about 1916 - Second world war)

Nazism and its consequences in literature

Literature in the Nazi Germany

January 30th, 1933, the Nazis and their chief Adolf Hitler seized the power in Germany. Any form of critical literature with regard to the capacity was prohibited, as well as the writers of left, Communists or Jews. Thousands of books are then burned on large bûchers. From 1938, following the reunification of the Austria to the Reich (the Anschluss ), the same policy will be applied in the Austrian province there. The government required poems then exciting the fatherland and the German people ( Blut-und-Boden-Dichtung : The poetry of blood and the ground, the official ideology being called Blut und Boden or BluBo ), the only not-ideological literature then tolerated was a literature of entertainment. The opponents with the mode are death threats, when they did not leave in exile. Thus died Jakob van Hoddis and Carl von Ossietzky. Many writers remained in their country, although they were opposed to National-socialisme. They were condemned to silence, and left their writings in their drawer or were confined with topics not-policies. Among most famous, Erich Kästner, Gerhart Hauptmann, or Wolfgang Koeppen remained in Germany.

Very rare are the writers who took party for the Nazism. Those, we can retain the names of Josef Weinheber or Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer. At all events, the literature pro-hitlèrienne has only one interest historical because presenting a character of great mediocrity.

Literature of exile

The German literature of exile (1933-1945) appeared in reaction against the Nazisme. Two major events marked it: the autos-da-fe with Berlin the May 10th 1933 and attacks it of Germany on the adjoining countries in 1938-1939. Centers of emigrants developed in Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Zurich, Prague, Moscow, New York or Mexico City. Publishers were assembled there.

Among the German authors in exile, one can note: Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Ernst Bloch, Lion Feuchtwanger, Bruno Frank, Oskar Maria Graf, Hermann Kesten, Annette Kolb, Emil Ludwig, Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann, Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Notices, Anna Seghers or Arnold Zweig. There was also Ernst Toller, Walter Hasenclever, Walter Benjamin and Kurt Tucholsky which committed suicide in exile.

Among the writers who remained in Germany, some were withdrawn in interior emigration ( innere Emigration ). This term applies to those which were in opposition to the government Nazi but which did not leave Germany for as much. Among those, one counts: Stefan Andres, Reinhold Schneider, Werner Bergengruen, Erich Kästner, Ernst Kreuder, Gertrud von the Fort and Ehm Welk.

The Holocaust and literature of the survivors

The writer who seems to be most important in this part of the history of the literature is undoubtedly Marcel Reich-Ranicki, especially with testimony that it gives us concerning the atrocities which one subjected the Jews in particular in the ghetto of Warsaw in his autobiography entitled Mein Leben .

The " Trümmerliteratur"

After the Second world war and until approximately 1950, creates for itself a literature of post-war period which describes destroyed Germany and the German literature.

National characteristics

Austrian literature

Felix Salten, author of famous the " Bambi " adapted by Disney, belonged to the literary circles and artistic of Vienna and attended Thomas Mann, Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Gustav Klimt, the Strauss like Freud. Salten was president of the PEN Austrian club of 1925 to 1934 from where it was driven out by the Nazis for " miss caractère".

Several Austrian writers emigrated in the years 1930, particularly after the Anschluss, of which Stefan Zweig, Hermann Broch and Franz Werfel.

Literature of GDR

GDR was defined itself as “Literaturgesellschaft” (“company of literature”) (the concept comes from Johannes R. Becher), it fought against the not-poetry of the west and the ghettoisation of the high culture.

A democratization was to be installation with the levels of the production, distribution and reception. Nevertheless, the concept of democratization became absurd because of censure and of the tests of the state to control creation, to functionalize the literature and to use it at its ends for the propaganda of the “ Realsozialismus ”.

Literature of FRG

Contemporary literature

Random links: