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

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German author

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

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

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Rainer Maria Rilke

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Franz Kafka

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Thomas Mann

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Heinrich Heine, c. 1827.

Heinrich Heine

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Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka

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Friedrich Hölderlin

Friedrich Hölderlin

German poet

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

German dramatist

Gerhart Hauptmann

Gerhart Hauptmann

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Franz Grillparzer

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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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Günter Grass

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Fallada, Hans

Hans Fallada

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Hermann Hesse

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Hugo von Hofmannsthal

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Quiz

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