German literature
The Old Saxon poem Heliand and the Old High German Hildebrandslied date from the 9th-c, but it was not until the 12th-c Minnesingers (troubadours) that the vernacular became established as a medium over Latin. Court epics such as Tristan und Isolde and Parzifal also appeared at this time. The prose works Tyll Eulenspiegel and Dr Faust appeared in the 15th-c, to be followed by the Meistersingers (master singers), Hans Sachs of Nuremberg being the most celebrated. Luther's German Bible (152234) provided the foundation of the literary language of N Europe. The Thirty Years' War (161848) was reflected in Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus (1669); but it was not until the mid-18th-c that German literature found a new direction. The classicist Lessing and the nationalist Herder provided inspiration for the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) school, characteristic of German Romanticism. The Schlegel brothers contributed an important element (Wilhelm's translation of Shakespeare appeared 17971810), as did the poet Hölderlin, the novelist J-P Richter and the dramatist Schiller; but the greatest writer of the age was Goethe, whose imaginative range transcends any movement or national boundary.
A major contribution to the German novel was made by Thomas Mann, notably with his earlier novels Buddenbrooks (1900), Der Tod in Venedig (1912, Death in Venice, filmed 1968), and Der Zauberberg (1924, The Magic Mountain). Hermann Hesse explored the duality of man's nature with novels such as Der Steppenwolf (1927, Steppenwolf) and Narziss und Goldmund (1930, Narcissus and Goldmund). World War 1 brought Expressionism to German fictional writing, with the nightmare world portrayed by the German-Czech writer Franz Kafka and the psychoanalytical novels of Jakob Wassermann. In Rainer Maria Rilke, Austria produced one of the great poets of the 20th-c. With the advent of the Nazi regime, liberal novelists such as Thomas Mann and Erich Maria Remarque went into exile. The novelists Günter Grass, author of Die Blechtrommel (1959, The Tin Drum, filmed 1979), and Uwe Johnson, author of the tetralogy, Jahrestage: Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl (197083, Anniversaries: From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl) represented the German generation that grew up in the Nazi era and experienced the contradictions of life in a Germany divided after World War 2. Heinrich Böll made an important contribution with novels such as Haus ohne Hüter (1954, The Unguarded House). Among women writers who established major reputations were the East German Christa Wolf, whose Medea : A Novel was published in 1998. The outstanding German dramatist of the 20th-c was the Marxist Bertolt Brecht, who staged his plays such as Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder (1941, Mother Courage and Her Children) at the revolutionary theatrical company, the Berliner Ensemble, which he founded in East Berlin in 1949. Other important contributions to German drama during the post-war years came from Switzerland, where Max Frisch and Friedrch Dürrenmatt both made bold experiments with dramatic form. Plays such as Der Stellvertreter (1963, The Deputy) by Rolf Hochhuth, and Peter Weiss's Die Vervolgung und Ermordung des Jean Paul Marats... (1964, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat ...) have received international recognition. Among promising new authors of recent times is the Austrian feminist playwright Elfriede Jelinek, who in 1998 was awarded Germany's most prestigious literary award, the Büchner Prize.
For well-known authors who wrote or write literature in the German language see list of German-language authors, list of German-language playwrights and list of German-language poets.
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