Among the fables, "Reynard the Fox" had a very early origin, and has remained a favorite of the German people for several centuries. After many transformations it reappeared as a popular work at the era of the Reformation, and it was at last immortalized by the version of Goethe.
5. THE DRAMA.—We find the first symptoms of a German drama as early as the thirteenth century, in rude attempts to perform religious pieces like the old Mysteries once so popular throughout Europe. At first these dramatic readings were conducted in the churches and by the priests, but when the people introduced burlesque digressions, they were banished to the open fields, where they assumed still greater license. Students in the universities delighted to take part in them, and these exhibitions were continued after the Reformation. There is no reason to suppose that the early Christians objected to these sacred dramas or mysteries when they were compatible with their religion. They were imported into Europe from Constantinople, by crusaders and pilgrims, and became favorite shows to an illiterate populace. Indeed, Christianity was first taught throughout the north of Europe by means of these Mysteries and miracle plays, and the first missionaries had familiarized their rude audiences with the prominent incidents of Biblical history, long before the art of reading could have been called in to communicate the chronicles themselves.
The most important writings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are the works of the monks of the mystic school, which form the connecting link between the great era of the Crusades and the greater era of the Reformation. They kindled and kept alive a new religious fervor among the inferior clergy and the middle and lower classes, and without the labors of these reformers of the faith, the reformers of the church would never have found a whole nation waiting to receive them, and ready to support them. While the scholastic divines who wrote in Latin introduced abstruse metaphysics into their theology, the mystics represented religion as abiding in the sentiments of the heart, rather than in doctrines. Their main principle was that piety depended not on ecclesiastical forms and ceremonies, but that it consisted in the abandonment of all selfish passions. The sentiments of the mystic writers were collected and arranged by Tauler (1361), in a well-known work, entitled "German Theology." Luther, in a preface to this book, expresses his admiration of its contents, and asserts that he had found in it the doctrines of the Reformation.
Another celebrated work of this school is "The Imitation of Christ," written in Latin, and generally attributed to Thomas à Kempis, a monk who died 1471. It has passed through numberless editions, and still maintains its place among the standard devotional works of Germany and other countries.
Two other events prepared the way for the German reformers of the sixteenth century—the foundation of the universities, (1350), and the invention of printing. The universities were national institutions, open alike to rich and poor, to the knight, the clerk, and the citizen. The nation itself called these schools into life, and in them the great men who inaugurated the next period of literature were fostered and formed.
The invention of printing (1438) admitted the middle classes, who had been debarred from the use of books, to the privileges hitherto enjoyed almost exclusively by the clergy and the nobility, and placed in their hands weapons more powerful than the swords of the knights, or the thunderbolts of the clergy. The years from 1450 to 1500 form a period of preparation for the great struggle that was to signalize the coming age.
PERIOD SECOND.
THE REFORMATION TO THE BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (1517-1700).
1. THE LUTHERAN PERIOD.—With the sixteenth century we enter upon the modern history and modern literature of Germany. The language now becomes settled, and the literature for a time becomes national. Luther and the Reformers belonged to the people, who, through them, now for the first time claimed an equality with the old estates of the realm, the two representatives of which, the emperor and the pope, were never more powerful than at this period. The armies of the emperor were recruited from Spain, Austria, Naples, Sicily, and Burgundy while the pope, armed with the weapons of the Inquisition, and the thunderbolts of excommunication, levied his armies of priests and monks from all parts of the Christian world. Against these formidable powers a poor Augustine monk came forth from his study in the small university of Wittenberg, with no armies, no treasures, with no weapon in his hand but the Bible, and in his clear manly voice defied both emperor and pope, clergy and nobility. There never was a more memorable spectacle.
After the Reformation nearly all eminent men in Germany, poets, philosophers, and historians, belonged to the Protestant party, and resided chiefly in the universities, which were what the monasteries had been under Charlemagne, and the castles under Frederic Barbarossa—the centres of gravitation for the intellectual and political life of the country. A new aristocracy now arose, founded on intellectual preëminence, which counted among its members princes, nobles, divines, soldiers, lawyers, and artists. But the danger which threatens all aristocracies was not averted from the intellectual nobility of Germany; the spirit of caste, which soon pervaded all their institutions, deprived the second generation of that power which men like Luther had gained at the beginning of the Reformation. The moral influence of the universities was great, but it would have been far greater if the intellectual leaders of the realm had not separated themselves from the ranks whence they themselves had risen, and to which alone they owed their influence. This intellectual aristocracy manifested a disregard of the real wants of the people, a contempt of all knowledge which did not wear the academic garb, and the same exclusive spirit of caste that characterizes all aristocracies. Latin continued to be the literary medium of scholars, and at the close of the seventeenth century German was only beginning to assert its capabilities as a vehicle of elegant and refined literature.