THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY
Luther, Zwingli, Albert Dürer, Leibnitz, Gottsched
NO RENAISSANCE.--The great originality of Germany from the literary point
of view--perhaps, too, from others--is that she _had no renaissance_, no
contact, at all events close, with classic antiquity. Her temperament
was no doubt hostile; the Reformation, that is, the impassioned adoption
of a primitive unadulterated Christianity conservative and directly
opposed to antiquity whether pagan or philosophical, added to the
repugnance. However that may be, the fact remains: Germany enjoyed no
renaissance.
LUTHER.--Also in the sixteenth century in Germany, as in France in the
fourteenth century, there was only popular poetry, and all the prose is
German, all reformist, all moralising, and has little or practically no
echo of antiquity. Luther, by his translation of the Bible into the
vulgar tongue, by his _prefaces_ to each book of the Bible, in his
polemical writings (_The Papacy and its Members_, _The Papacy Elevated at
Rome by the Devil_, etc.), by his _Sermons and Letters_, gave to Teutonic
thought a direction which long endured, and to Teutonic prose a solidity,
purity, sobriety, and vigour which exercised an immense influence on
human minds.
THE REFORMERS.--Following Luther, Zwingli, Hutten, Eberling, Melanchthon
(but in Latin), Erasmus (most frequently in Latin but sometimes in
French) spread the new doctrine or doctrines in relation thereto.
ERASMUS; ALBERT DÜRER; GOTTSCHED.--An exception must be made about
Erasmus in what has just been observed. With a very unfettered mind,
often as much in opposition to the side of Luther as to the side of Rome,
and also prone to attack the pure humanists who styled themselves
Ciceronians, Erasmus was a humanist, an impassioned student of ancient
letters, so that he has one foot in the Renaissance and one in reform,
and withal possessed a very original brain, and was, from every aspect,
"ultra-modern."
Albert Dürer must also be cited: mathematician, architect, painter, yet
belonging to our subject by his _four books on the human proportion_
wherein he shows, in chastened and precise style, that he himself is
nothing less than the earliest founder of Teutonic æstheticism.
The seventeenth century--extending it, as is reasonable enough, up to the
region of 1730--is almost exclusively the era of French influence and a
little, if desired, of Italian influence. The critic Gottsched (_Poetic
Art, Grammar, Eloquence_) maintained the excellence of French literature
and the necessity of drawing inspiration from it with an energy of
conviction which drew on him the hatred of the succeeding generation.
LEIBNITZ.--German poetry of his period, possessing neither originality
nor power, could only interest the erudite and the searchers. The domain
of prose is more enthralling. Leibnitz, who wrote in Latin and French,
and even in German, is pre-eminently the great thinker he is reputed
to be; but though he never possessed nor even pretended to possess
originality in style, he is nevertheless highly esteemed for the purity,
limpidity, and facility of his language.