(a) _The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries._--As is the case with all
transitional periods of literary history, this epoch of German
literature may be considered under two aspects: on the one hand, we may
follow in it the decadence and disintegration of the literature of the
Middle High German period; on the other, we may study the beginnings of
modern forms of poetry and the preparation of that spiritual revolution,
which meant hardly less to the Germanic peoples than the Renaissance to
the Latin races--the Protestant Reformation.
By the middle of the 14th century, knighthood with its chivalric ideals
was rapidly declining, and the conditions under which medieval poetry
had flourished were passing away. The social change rendered the courtly
epic of Arthur's Round Table in great measure incomprehensible to the
younger generation, and made it difficult for them to understand the
spirit that actuated the heroes of the national epic; the tastes to
which the lyrics of the great Minnesingers had appealed were vitiated by
the more practical demands of the rising middle classes. But the stories
of chivalry still appealed as stories to the people, although the old
way of telling them was no longer appreciated. The feeling for beauty of
form and expression was lost; the craving for a moral purpose and
didactic aim had to be satisfied at the cost of artistic beauty; and
sensational incident was valued more highly than fine character-drawing
or inspired poetic thought. Signs of the decadence are to be seen in the
_Karlmeinet_ of this period, stories from the youth of Charlemagne, in a
continuation of _Parzival_ by two Alsatians, Claus Wisse and Philipp
Colin (c. 1335), in an _Apollonius von Tyrus_ by Heinrich von Neuenstadt
(c. 1315), and a _Konigstochter von Frankreich_ by Hans von Buhel (c.
1400). The story of Siegfried was retold in a rough ballad, _Das Lied
von hurnen Seyfried_, the _Heldenbuch_ was recast in _Knittelvers_ or
doggerel (1472), and even the Arthurian epic was parodied. A no less
marked symptom of decadence is to be seen in a large body of allegorical
poetry analogous to the _Roman de la rose_ in France; Heinzelein of
Constance, at the end of the 13th, and Hadamar von Laber and Hermann von
Sachsenheim, about the middle of the 15th century, were representatives
of this movement. As time went on, prose versions of the old stories
became more general, and out of these developed the _Volksbucher_, such
as _Loher und Maller_, _Die Haimonskinder_, _Die schone Magelone_,
_Melusine_, which formed the favourite reading of the German people for
centuries. As the last monuments of the decadent narrative literature of
the middle ages, we may regard the _Buch der Abenteuer_ of Ulrich
Fuetrer, written at the end of the 15th century, and _Der Weisskonig_
and _Teuerdank_ by the emperor Maximilian I. (1459-1519) printed in the
early years of the 16th. At the beginning of the new epoch the Minnesang
could still point to two masters able to maintain the great traditions
of the 13th century, Hugo von Montfort (1357-1423) and Oswald von
Wolkenstein (1367-1445); but as the lyric passed into the hands of the
middle-class poets of the German towns, it was rapidly shorn of its
essentially lyric qualities; _die Minne_ gave place to moral and
religious dogmatism, emphasis was laid on strict adherence to the rules
of composition, and the simple forms of the older lyric were superseded
by ingenious metrical distortions. Under the influence of writers like
Heinrich von Meissen ("Frauenlob," c. 1250-1318) and Heinrich von Mugeln
in the 14th century, like Muskatblut and Michael Beheim (1416-c. 1480)
in the 15th, the Minnesang thus passed over into the Meistergesang. In
the later 15th and in the 16th centuries all the south German towns
possessed flourishing Meistersinger schools in which the art of writing
verse was taught and practised according to complicated rules, and it
was the ambition of every gifted citizen to rise through the various
grades from _Schuler_ to _Meister_ and to distinguish himself in the
"singing contests" instituted by the schools.
Such are the decadent aspects of the once rich literature of the Middle
High German period in the 14th and 15th centuries. Turning now to the
more positive side of the literary movement, we have to note a revival
of a popular lyric poetry--the Volkslied--which made the futility and
artificiality of the Meistergesang more apparent. Never before or since
has Germany been able to point to such a rich harvest of popular poetry
as is to be seen in the Volkslieder of these two centuries. Every form
of popular poetry is to be found here--songs of love and war, hymns and
drinking-songs, songs of spring and winter, historical ballads, as well
as lyrics in which the old motives of the Minnesang reappear stripped of
all artificiality. More obvious ties with the literature of the
preceding age are to be seen in the development of the _Schwank_ or
comic anecdote. Collections of such stories, which range from the
practical jokes of _Till Eulenspiegel_ (1515), and the coarse witticisms
of the _Pfaffe vom Kalenberg_ (end of 14th century) and _Peter Leu_
(1550), to the religious and didactic anecdotes of J. Pauli's _Schimpf
und Ernst_ (1522) or the more literary _Rollwagenbuchlein_ (1555) of
Jorg Wickram and the _Wendunmut_ (1563 ff.) of H.W. Kirchhoff--these
dominate in large measure the literature of the 15th and 16th centuries;
they are the literary descendants of the medieval _Pfaffe Amis_,
_Markolf_ and _Reinhart Fuchs_. An important development of this type of
popular literature is to be seen in the _Narrenschiff_ of Sebastian
Brant (1457-1521), where the humorous anecdote became a vehicle of the
bitterest satire; Brant's own contempt for the vulgarity of the
ignorant, and the deep, unsatisfied craving of all strata of society for
a wider intellectual horizon and a more humane and dignified life, to
which Brant gave voice, make the _Narrenschiff_, which appeared in 1494,
a landmark on the way that led to the Reformation. Another form--the
Beast fable and Beast epic--which is but sparingly represented in
earlier times, appealed with peculiar force to the new generation. At
the very close of the Middle High German period, Ulrich Boner had
revived the Aesopic fable in his _Edelstein_ (1349), translations of
Aesop in the following century added to the popularity of the fable
(q.v.), and in the century of the Reformation it became, in the hands of
Burkard Waldis (_Esopus_, 1548) and Erasmus Alberus (_Buch von der
Tugend und Weisheit_, 1550), a favourite instrument of satire and
polemic. A still more attractive form of the Beast fable was the epic of
_Reinke de Vos_, which had been cultivated by Flemish poets in the 13th
and 14th centuries and has come down to us in a Low Saxon translation,
published at Lubeck in 1498. This, too, like Brant's poem, is a powerful
satire on human folly, and is also, like the _Narrenschiff_, a harbinger
of the coming Reformation.
A complete innovation was the drama (q.v.), which, as we have seen, had
practically no existence in Middle High German times. As in all European
literatures, it emerged slowly and with difficulty from its original
subservience to the church liturgy. As time went on, the vernacular was
substituted for the original Latin, and with increasing demands for
pageantry, the scene of the play was removed to the churchyard or the
market-place; thus the opportunity arose in the 14th and 15th centuries
for developing the _Weihnachtsspiel_, _Osterspiel_ and _Passionsspiel_
on secular lines. The enlargement of the scope of the religious play to
include legends of the saints implied a further step in the direction of
a complete separation of the drama from ecclesiastical ceremony. The
most interesting example of this encroachment of the secular spirit is
the _Spiel von Frau Jutten_--Jutta being the notorious Pope Joan--by an
Alsatian, Dietrich Schernberg, in 1480. Meanwhile, in the 15th century,
a beginning had been made of a drama entirely independent of the church.
The mimic representations--originally allegorical in character--with
which the people amused themselves at the great festivals of the year,
and more especially in spring, were interspersed with dialogue, and
performed on an improvised stage. This was the beginning of the
_Fastnachtsspiel_ or Shrovetide-play, the subject of which was a comic
anecdote similar to those of the many collections of _Schwanke_. Amongst
the earliest cultivators of the _Fastnachtsspiel_ were Hans Rosenplut
(fl. c. 1460) and Hans Folz (fl. c. 1510), both of whom were associated
with Nuremberg.
(b) _The Age of the Reformation._--Promising as were these literary
beginnings of the 15th century, the real significance of the period in
Germany's intellectual history is to be sought outside literature,
namely, in two forces which immediately prepared the way for the
Reformation--mysticism and humanism. The former of these had been a more
or less constant factor in German religious thought throughout the
middle ages, but with Meister Eckhart (? 1260-1327), the most powerful
and original of all the German mystics, with Heinrich Seuse or Suso (c.
1300-1366), and Johannes Tauler (c. 1300-1361), it became a clearly
defined mental attitude towards religion; it was an essentially personal
interpretation of Christianity, and, as such, was naturally conducive to
the individual freedom which Protestantism ultimately realized. It is
thus not to be wondered at that we should owe the early translations of
the Bible into German--one was printed at Strassburg in 1466--to the
mystics. Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg (1445-1510), a pupil of the
humanists and a friend of Sebastian Brant, may be regarded as a link
between Eckhart and the earlier mysticists and Luther. Humanism was
transplanted to German soil with the foundation of the university of
Prague in 1348, and it made even greater strides than mysticism. Its
immediate influence, however, was restricted to the educated classes;
the pre-Reformation humanists despised the vernacular and wrote and
thought only in Latin. Thus although neither Johann Reuchlin of
Pforzheim (1455-1522), nor even the patriotic Alsatian, Jakob Wimpfeling
(or Wimpheling) (1450-1528)--not to mention the great Dutch humanist
Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536)--has a place in the history of German
literature, their battle for liberalism in thought and scholarship
against the narrow orthodoxy of the Church cleared the way for a healthy
national literature among the German-speaking peoples. The incisive wit
and irony of humanistic satire--we need only instance the _Epistolae
obscurorum virorum_ (1515-1517)--prevented the German satirists of the
Reformation age from sinking entirely into that coarse brutality to
which they were only too prone. To the influence of the humanists we
also owe many translations from the Latin and Italian dating from the
15th century. Prominent among the writers who contributed to the group
of literature were Niklas von Wyl, chancellor of Wurttemberg, and his
immediate contemporary Albrecht von Eyb (1420-1475).
Martin Luther (1483-1546), Germany's greatest man in this age of
intellectual new-birth, demands a larger share of attention in a survey
of literature than his religious and ecclesiastical activity would in
itself justify, if only because the literary activity of the age cannot
be regarded apart from him. From the Volkslied and the popular _Schwank_
to satire and drama, literature turned exclusively round the Reformation
which had been inaugurated on the 31st of October 1517 by Luther's
publication of the _Theses against Indulgences_ in Wittenberg. In his
three tracts, _An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation_, _De
captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae_, and _Von der Freiheit eines
Christenmenschen_ (1520), Luther laid down his principles of reform, and
in the following year resolutely refused to recant his heresies in a
dramatic scene before the Council of Worms. Luther's Bible (1522-1534)
had unique importance not merely for the religious and intellectual
welfare of the German people, but also for their literature. It is in
itself a literary monument, a German classic, and the culmination and
justification of that movement which had supplanted the medieval knight
by the burgher and swept away Middle High German poetry. Luther, well
aware that his translation of the Bible must be the keystone to his
work, gave himself endless pains to produce a thoroughly German
work--German both in language and in spirit. It was important that the
dialect into which the Bible was translated should be comprehensible
over as wide an area as possible of the German-speaking world, and for
this reason he took all possible care in choosing the vocabulary and
forms of his _Gemeindeutsch_. The language of the Saxon chancery thus
became, thanks to Luther's initiative, the basis of the modern High
German literary language. As a hymn-writer (_Geistliche Lieder_, 1564),
Luther was equally mindful of the importance of adapting himself to the
popular tradition; and his hymns form the starting-point for a vast
development of German religious poetry which did not reach its highest
point until the following century.
The most powerful and virile literature of this age was the satire with
which the losing side retaliated on the Protestant leaders. Amongst
Luther's henchmen, Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), the "praeceptor
Germaniae," and Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523) were powerful allies in
the cause, but their intellectual sympathies were with the Latin
humanists; and with the exception of some vigorous German prose and
still more vigorous German verse by Hutten, both wrote in Latin. The
satirical dramas of Niklas Manuel, a Swiss writer and the polemical
fables of Erasmus Alberus (c. 1500-1553), on the other hand, were
insignificant compared with the fierce assault on Protestantism by the
Alsatian monk, Thomas Murner (1475-1537). The most unscrupulous of all
German satirists, Murner shrank from no extremes of scurrility, his
attacks on Luther reaching their culmination in the gross personalities
of _Von dem lutherischen Narren_ (1522). It was not until the following
generation that the Protestant party could point to a satirist who in
genius and power was at all comparable to Murner, namely, to Johann
Fischart (c. 1550-c. 1591); but when Fischart's Rabelaisian humour is
placed by the side of his predecessor's work, we see that, in spite of
counter-reformations, the Protestant cause stood in a very different
position in Fischart's day from that which it had occupied fifty years
before. Fischart took his stand on the now firm union between humanism
and Protestantism. His chief work, the _Affentheuerlich
Naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung_ (1575), a Germanization of the
first book of Rabelais' satire, is a witty and ingenious monstrosity, a
satirical comment on the life of the 16th century, not the virulent
expression of party strife. The day of a personal and brutal type of
satire was clearly over, and the writers of the later 16th century
reverted more and more to the finer methods of the humanists. The satire
of Bartholomaeus Ringwaldt (1530-1599) and of Georg Rollenhagen
(1542-1609), author of the _Froschmeuseler_ (1595), was more "literary"
and less actual than even Fischart's.
On the whole, the form of literature which succeeded best in
emancipating itself from the trammels of religious controversy in the
16th century was the drama. Protestantism proved favourable to its
intellectual and literary development, and the humanists, who had always
prided themselves on their imitations of Latin comedy, introduced into
it a sense for form and proportion. The Latin school comedy in Germany
was founded by J. Wimpfeling with his _Stylpho_ (1470) and by J.
Reuchlin with his witty adaptation of _Maitre Patelin_ in his _Henno_
(1498). In the 16th century the chief writers of Latin dramas were
Thomas Kirchmair or Naogeorgus (1511-1563), Caspar Brulow (1585-1627),
and Nikodemus Frischlin (1547-1590), who also wrote dramas in the
vernacular. The work of these men bears testimony in its form and its
choice of subjects to the close relationship between Latin and German
drama in the 16th century. One of the earliest focusses for a German
drama inspired by the Reformation was Switzerland. In Basel, Pamphilus
Gengenbach produced moralizing _Fastnachtsspiele_ in 1515-1516; Niklas
Manuel of Bern (1484-1530)--who has just been mentioned--employed the
same type of play as a vehicle of pungent satire against the Mass and
the sale of indulgences. But it was not long before the German drama
benefited by the humanistic example: the _Parabell vam vorlorn Szohn_ by
Burkard Waldis (1527), the many dramas on the subject of
_Susanna_--notably those of Sixt Birck (1532) and Paul Rebhun(1535)--and
Frischlin's German plays are attempts to treat Biblical themes according
to classic methods. In another of the important literary centres of the
16th century, however, in Nuremberg, the drama developed on indigenous
lines. Hans Sachs (1494-1576), the Nuremberg cobbler and Meistersinger,
the most productive writer of the age, went his own way; a voracious
reader and an unwearied storyteller, he left behind him a vast literary
legacy, embracing every form of popular literature from _Spruch_ and
_Schwank_ to complicated _Meistergesang_ and lengthy drama. He laid
under contribution the rich Renaissance literature with which the
humanistic translators had flooded Germany, and he became himself an
ardent champion of the "Wittembergisch Nachtigall" Luther. But in the
progressive movement of the German drama he played an even smaller role
than his Swiss and Saxon contemporaries; for his tragedies and comedies
are deficient in all dramatic qualities; they are only stories in
dialogue. In the _Fastnachtsspiele_, where dramatic form is less
essential than anecdotal point and brevity, he is to be seen at his
best. Rich as the 16th century was in promise, the conditions for the
development of a national drama were unfavourable. At the close of the
century the influence of the English drama--brought to Germany by
English actors--introduced the deficient dramatic and theatrical force
into the humanistic and "narrative" drama which has just been
considered. This is to be seen in the work of Jakob Ayrer (d. 1605) and
Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick (1564-1613). But unfortunately these
beginnings had hardly made themselves felt when the full current of the
Renaissance was diverted across Germany, bringing in its train the
Senecan tragedy. Then came the Thirty Years' War, which completely
destroyed the social conditions indispensable for the establishment of a
theatre at once popular and national.
The novel was less successful than the drama in extricating itself from
satire and religious controversy. Fischart was too dependent on foreign
models and too erratic--at one time adapting Rabelais, at another
translating the old heroic romance of _Amadis de Gaula_--to create a
national form of German fiction in the 16th century; the most important
novelist was a much less talented writer, the Alsatian Meistersinger and
dramatist Jorg Wickram (d. c. 1560), who has been already mentioned as
the author of a popular collection of anecdotes, the _Rollwagenbuchlein_.
His longer novels, _Der Knabenspiegel_ (1554) and Der Goldfaden (1557),
are in form, and especially in the importance they attach to
psychological developments, the forerunners of the movement to which we
owe the best works of German fiction in the 18th century. But Wickram
stands alone. So inconsiderable, in fact, is the fiction of the
Reformation age in Germany that we have to regard the old _Volksbucher_
as its equivalent; and it is significant that of all the prose writings
of this age, the book which affords the best insight into the temper and
spirit of the Reformation was just one of these crude _Volksbucher_,
namely, the famous story of the magician _Doctor Johann Faust_, published
at Frankfort in 1587.