Reformation to Baroque
German Literature
Course 1 · Chapter 3 · Reformation to Baroque
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries changed German writing in two ways. Print and the Reformation put books, and a more uniform written German, in many more hands. Then the Thirty Years' War devastated much of the German lands and left its mark on the literature that followed. This chapter looks at Luther's Bible, the popular chapbooks including the Faust book of 1587, the poets of the Baroque, and Grimmelshausen's war novel Simplicissimus. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".
Print and Luther's Bible
The press
Johannes Gutenberg's printing with movable type in Mainz, around 1450, made books cheaper and faster to produce (check). Within a few decades printing houses spread across the German towns, and pamphlets became a medium of public argument.
Luther's translation
Martin Luther translated the New Testament in 1522, working at the Wartburg, and the complete Bible appeared in 1534 (check). It was widely printed and read, and it reached readers across the German lands.
Luther and the language
Luther said he aimed to write German as ordinary people speak it, and defended his choices in the Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen of 1530 (check). Historians now think a written standard was already forming, and that Luther's Bible helped to spread and shape it rather than create it from nothing (check the debate).
Popular Books and the Faust Book
- Satire. Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools, 1494) was a bestseller of illustrated moral satire (check).
- Tricksters. The chapbook Till Eulenspiegel, printed early in the sixteenth century (check), collected the pranks of a peasant rogue and was translated widely.
- The Faust book. The Historia von D. Johann Fausten, printed in Frankfurt in 1587 (check), told of a learned man who made a pact with the devil for knowledge and power and was carried off to hell. It was a moral warning in a Lutheran spirit, and it became the starting point for Marlowe's play and, much later, for Goethe's Faust (Chapter 5).
- A real person? A man called Faust seems to have lived in the early sixteenth century, but little is certain about him (check), so the legend is better treated as a story that grew than as a biography.
The Baroque and the Thirty Years' War
| Name and work (check each) | Note |
|---|---|
| Martin Opitz, Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey (1624) | A handbook that set rules for German verse, arguing that German poetry should follow stress patterns and be taken as seriously as Latin and French. |
| Andreas Gryphius (1616 to 1664), sonnets | Poems of vanity and death written in the shadow of the war; "Tränen des Vaterlandes" is a famous example. |
| Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (about 1621 to 1676), Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (1668) | A picaresque novel of a boy swept through the Thirty Years' War as page, soldier, rogue and hermit. It is the best-known German work of its century. |
Baroque Themes
- Vanity. The Latin vanitas idea that worldly things are fleeting runs through the poetry.
- Memento mori. Reminders of death appear alongside enjoyment of life.
- Theatre of the world. The stage as an image of life was a favourite of the period (check examples).
- Learning and language societies. Groups such as the Fruitbearing Society (founded 1617; check) promoted German as a literary language.
Exercises
Explain how print and Luther's Bible changed the position of written German, and note one reason to be careful with the claim that Luther "created" modern German.
Describe the Faust book of 1587 and say what message it carried for its first readers.
Compare how Gryphius and Grimmelshausen record the Thirty Years' War, and say why neither should be read as plain reportage.
Quick Reference
- Print: Gutenberg, about 1450 (check)
- Luther: New Testament 1522, Bible 1534 (check)
- Faust book: 1587, the pact and the warning
- The war: 1618 to 1648; Gryphius, Grimmelshausen
- The caution: legends and literary conventions are not reportage