An anthology of German literature

by Calvin Thomas

[XL.]	Martin Luther	201
[XLI.]	Ulrich von Hütten	206
[XLII.]	Thomas Murner	209
[XLIII.]	The Reformation Drama	211
[XLIV.]	Hans Sachs	221
[XLV.]	Folk-Songs of the Sixteenth Century	230
[XLVI.]	The Chapbooks	233
[XLVII.]	Johann Fischart	239
[XLVIII.]	Jakob Ayrer	242
[XLIX.]	Georg Rodolf Weckherlin	246
[L.]	Martin Opitz	248
[LI.]	Paul Fleming	253
[LII.]	Friedrich von Logau	255
[LIII.]	Andreas Gryphius	259
[LIV.]	Simon Dach	266
[LV.]	Paul Gerhardt	271
[LVI.]	Friedrich Spe	273
[LVII.]	Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau	277
[LVIII.]	Daniel Casper von Lohenstein	280
[LIX.]	Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen	283
[LX.]	Benjamin Neukirch	286
[LXI.]	Johann Christian Günther	289
[LXII.]	Barthold Heinrich Brockes	294
[LXIII.]	Johann Christoph Gottsched	297
[LXIV.]	Johann Jakob Bodmer	301
[LXV.]	Albrecht Haller	305
[LXVI.]	Ewald von Kleist	310
[LXVII.]	Friedrich von Hagedorn	314
[LXVIII.]	Christian Fürchtegott Gellert	319
[LXIX.]	Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim	323
[LXX.]	Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock	326
[LXXI.]	Christoph Martin Wieland	334
[LXXII.]	Gotthold Ephraim Lessing	342
[LXXIII.]	Johann Gottfried Herder	352
[LXXIV.]	Johann Wolfgang Goethe	360
[LXXV.]	Minor Dramatists of the Storm and Stress Era	371
[LXXVI.]	The Göttingen Poetic Alliance	381
[LXXVII.]	Gottfried August Bürger	386
[LXXVIII.]	Friedrich Schiller	392

PART I

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

IN MODERN GERMAN TRANSLATIONS

[ I. THE LAY OF HILDEBRAND]

The only surviving remnant, in the German language, of the ancient heroic poetry cultivated by the Germanic tribes prior to their Christianization. The precious fragment consists of 69 alliterating verses, which are preserved in a Kassel manuscript of the 8th or 9th century. The language shows a mixture of Low and High German, there are gaps in the text, the meaning of several words is doubtful, and the versification is here and there defective. All this, which some account for by supposing that the manuscript was copied from a version which had been written down from memory and not perfectly recalled, makes translation difficult and uncertain. The poetic version here given is that found in Bötticher and Kinzel’s Denkmäler der älteren deutschen Literatur, 9th edition, 1905, which in the main follows Müllenhoff’s text and theories with regard to gaps, transpositions, etc. For a careful prose version by a very competent scholar see Kögel’s Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, I, I, 212.