German literature

Table of Contents

Introduction
Origins and Middle Ages
- Pre-Christian and early Christian periods
- High courtly literature: Middle High German Classicism
  - The lyric poetry of courtly love
  - Courtly romance
    - Hartmann von Aue
    - Wolfram von Eschenbach
    - Gottfried von Strassburg
    - Nibelungenlied
- Post-Classical Middle High German literature
Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance
- Reformation
- The Baroque
The 18th century
- Age of Enlightenment
  - Rationalism
  - Early Enlightenment
  - Enlightenment
    - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
    - Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Christoph Martin Wieland
    - Johann Gottfried von Herder
  - Late Enlightenment (Sturm und Drang)
- Weimar Classicism: Goethe and Schiller
- Post-Classicism
  - Goethe and the Romantics
  - Jean Paul, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Heinrich von Kleist
The 19th century
- The Romantic Movement
- Realist modes
  - Bourgeois Realism
  - Theodor Fontane
  - 19th-century drama
  - Naturalism
- Fin de siècle movements
  - Friedrich Nietzsche
  - Aestheticism
The 20th century
- German Modernism
  - Expressionism
  - Franz Kafka
  - Other works of German Modernism
- The post-1945 period: “Stunde Null”
- The late 1950s and the ’60s
- The 1970s and ’80s
- Postmodernism
- After reunification
- The turn of the 21st century

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Topics

Poetic Realism Middle High German literature Old High German literature Old Saxon literature Büchner Prize Etzel German language literature Western literature English literature French literature African literature American literature Arabic literature Italian literature Spanish literature Japanese literature Latin American literature Chinese literature

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Key People

Rolf Hochhuth

German writer

Wilhelm Carl Grimm

German author, folklorist, and philologist

Konrad Kujau

German author

Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm

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Heinrich Harrer

explorer and writer

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke

Austrian-German poet

Friedrich Schiller, painting by Anton Graff, c. 1785.

Friedrich Schiller

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Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

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Gotthold Lessing, detail of an oil painting by Georg May, 1768; in the Gleimhaus, Halberstadt, Ger.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

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Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann

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Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka

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Heinrich Heine, c. 1827.

Heinrich Heine

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Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

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Friedrich Hölderlin

Friedrich Hölderlin

German poet

Franz Grillparzer

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Gerhart Hauptmann

Gerhart Hauptmann

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Ludwig Meidner

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Heinrich von Kleist, drawing by Wilhelmina von Zenge, 1801; in the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.

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Quiz

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