In order to present to your minds an outline whereby will be rendered easier the following of its course from its rise to the present day, I will, in the first place, label three great epochs in its progress, with the names which made them epochs. Of the first, however, can be given but the name of the work, that of its author being unknown. I allude to the Nibelungenlied, the Song of the Nibelungen, the great Epic of the Germans, written about the beginning of the thirteenth century, more than a hundred years before the birth of Chaucer. Luther makes the second epoch, and Goethe represents the third. We have here a period embracing six hundred years. But long before the production of the Nibelungenlied, and the cotemporaneous lyrical poetry, letters were cultivated in Germany and books written, which, though containing nothing worthy of preservation, deserve to be considered and respected as bold forerunners, that fitted the Germans to value the singers of the Nibelungen period, while for these they cultivated the language into the degree of flexibility and fullness required for the medium of poetry. Charlemagne, who in the eighth century, conquered and converted Germany to Christianity, established schools in the monasteries, caused to be collected the ancient songs and laws, ordered the preaching to be in German, and had translations made from Latin. As the immediate result of this beginning, chronicles and translations in verse of the Bible, were written by the inmates of monasteries during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries.
The first period of German literature, I have named after the Nibelungenlied, a work which is not only the greatest of its age, but stands alone and unapproached as a national epic in the literature of all modern Europe. This period is commonly called the Swabian, from the influence of the Swabian line of emperors, who commenced to reign as emperors of Germany in the twelfth century, and who, by their zealous and judicious encouragement of letters, made the Swabian dialect prevail over the Franconian, which had hitherto been predominant. In the Swabian dialect is written the Song of the Nibelungen, which, like the Iliad—according to the well supported theory of the great German philologist Wolff—is wrought into a compact whole out of the traditions, songs and ballads, current at the time of its composition. The name Nibelungen, is that of a powerful Burgundian tribe, whose tragic fate is the subject of the poem. Nibelungen is obviously a name derived from the northern mythology, and is transferred to the Burgundians, when these get possession of the fatal Nibelungen hoard of treasure. The time is in the fifth century, and the scene is on the Rhine and afterwards on the frontier of Hungary and Austria.
Chriemhild, a beautiful daughter of a king of the Burgundians, is wooed and won by Siegfried, a prince of Netherlands, who possesses an invisible cloak, a sword of magic power, the inexhaustible hoard of the Nibelungen, and, like Achilles, is invulnerable except in one spot. Brunhild, a princess, endowed, too, with supernatural qualities, weds at the same time king Gunther, Chriemhild's brother; having been won by force by Gunther, aided by Siegfried. Jealousy and discord grow up between the two princesses, and reach such a pitch, that Brunhild plots against the life of Siegfried, and has him treacherously assassinated by the brothers of his wife, who wound him through the vulnerable spot between his shoulders. After years of grief, during which she harbors designs of vengeance, Chriemhild accepts, as a means of avenging her wrongs, the offer of the hand of Etzel, king of the Huns, the Attila of history, and leaving Gunther's court, accompanies Etzel to Hungary. Hither, after a time, she invites with his champions, Gunther, who in the face of dark forebodings, accepts the invitation, and with a chosen army of Nibelungen, comes to Etzel's court, where by Chriemhild's contrivance, he and all his band are enclosed in an immense Minster and therein slain.
Such is the outline of the story of this poem, which consists of thirty-nine books, or Adventures, as they are called, extending to nearly ten thousand lines. Over the whole hangs the dark northern mythology, under whose mysterious influences the action proceeds. The narrative is full of life and picturesque beauty. The story is developed with life-like truth and sequence, and with a unity of design unsurpassed in any poetic work. Naif simplicity and tragic grandeur unite to give it attraction.
At the time when the song of the Nibelungen was written, Germany was richer than any European country in poetic literature. Besides this great Epic, many poems of an epic character were written, relating, in addition to national themes, to Charlemagne and his knights, King Arthur and his round table, and others noted in the times of chivalry. There too flourished the Minnesinger, that is, love-singers, numbers of them knights and gentlemen, who, in imitation of the Troubadours of southern France, cultivated poetry and sang of love and war. The characteristics of the Minnelieder, or love songs, are simplicity, truth, and earnestness of feeling, joined with beautiful descriptions of nature. The golden age of German romantic poetry, was in the beginning of the thirteenth century. After the fall of the Hohenshauffen family from the imperial throne in the middle of this century, anarchy and civil war prevailed for a time in Germany. The nobility, given up to petty warfare, soon fell back from the state of comparative culture to which, by devotion to poetry, they had ascended, into rudeness and grossness.
Meanwhile the towns, particularly the imperial cities, which were directly under the emperor, were growing into importance. In these the civilization of the age centered. To them too, Poetry fled for preservation, and, deserted by nobles, took refuge with mechanics. And in a spirit that cannot be too warmly praised, was she welcomed. Zealously and earnestly did the worthy shoemakers, and carpenters of Nüenberg, Augsburg, Strasburg, and other towns betake themselves to reading poetry, and writing verse,—for with all their good will and zeal and laborious endeavors, they could produce only a mechanical imitation of their predecessors. Nevertheless, much good did they do. For carrying on the business of verse-making, they formed themselves into guilds or associations, on the principle of those established by the different trades: hence their name of master-singers, an apprenticeship being required for admission into the guild. So respectable and so much respected were these associations, that knights and priests did not disdain to belong to them. Thus did the master-singers, though ungifted with the soul of poetry which animated the Minnesingers, keep alive the love of literature and preserve as it were its body. Their most prosperous period was in the 15th century, when several of their number laid the foundation of the German Drama, and by their writings, particularly the satirical, contributed to prepare the German mind for the influence of Luther. Especially distinguished were men with the unmusical names of Hans Folks, Hans Rosenplüt, and Hans Sacks. The last,—an industrious shoemaker who still found time to write numberless dramas, not without wit, spirit and invention,—still holds an honorable place in German Literature.
During the same period, the result of the tendency to intellectual developement then manifested throughout Europe,—were first founded in Germanic Universities. The oldest is that of Prague, established by Charles IV in 1345. In imitation of it, that of Heidelberg was founded in 1386; and in the following century they multiplied all over Germany. Their effects were for a time injurious. By introducing Latin, they brought contempt upon the native language, and as a consequence, contempt also upon native poetry. This influence lasted until within less than a century of the present time. It is only indeed fifty years since the practice, for a long while universal, of lecturing in Latin, was entirely disused in the universities of Germany. As the universities rose, literature sank. Latin usurped the place of German: scholastic philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and medicine with its kindred studies,—for, as yet there was no science, engrossed these seats of mental labor. But even in the early stage of their existence, while delving blindly at veins, many of them not destined ever to yield a precious metal, they have a claim to be regarded with honor and thankfulness, not only as the sources of so much after-fertility, but that within their walls was disciplined and instructed, and stored with the manifold learning which made more fearful its gigantic powers, that mind whose startling flashes fixed, in the opening of the 16th century, the gaze of the world it was about to overspread with a purifying conflagration. In 1503 was first heard in public, lecturing in the university of Erfurt, on the physics and ethics of Aristotle, the voice of Martin Luther.
On the long undulating line of human progression, here and there appear, at wide distances apart, men, in whom seem to centre, condensed into tenfold force, the faculties and spirit of humanity, apparently for the purpose of furthering by almost superhuman effort, its great interests,—men who, through the union of deep insight with wisest action, utter words and do deeds, which so touch, as with the hand of inspiration, the chords of the human heart, that their fellow men start up as though a new spring were moved in their souls, and, shaking off the clogging trammels of custom, bound forward on their career with freer motion and wider aim. High among these gifted few, stands Luther,—the successful assertor, in the face of deeply founded and strongly fortified authority, of mental independence. This is not the occasion to dwell on the keen sagacity, the wise counsel, the hardy acts, the stern perseverance, the broad labors, wherewith this mighty German made good his bold position, and, partly the trumpet-tongued spokesman, and partly the creator of the spirit of his age, so powerfully affected the world's destiny. I have here to speak of his influence upon the literature of Germany. That influence was twofold. First, by the mental enfranchisement—whereof he was the agent and instrument—of a large mass of the German people, he gave an impetus to thought and a scope to intellectual activity, and thereby opened up the deep springs of the German mind; and secondly, by one great and unsurpassed literary effort, he fixed the language of his country. The bold spirit of inquiry, of which he set the example with such immense consequences—and with such immense consequences because it was congenial to his countrymen,—has been the chief agent in working out the results that in our age have given to German literature its elevated rank: while upon the dialect which, two hundred years after his death, was the pliant medium for the thoughts of Kant and the creations of Goethe, he exerted such a power, that it is called Luther's German.
When Luther began to preach and to write, Latin was the language of the learned. Towards the end of the 15th century, that is, about the period of his birth, unsuccessful attempts were made to circulate translations of the ancient classics. The translations found few readers and made no impression. Cotemporaneous with Luther, and a forerunner of the great Reformer in attacking with boldness and skill the usurpations of the Roman hierarchy, was Ulrich von Hutten, a name much honored in Germany. But he wrote excellent Latin and wretched German. The union in one man of the power to fix upon himself, and hold as by a spell, the minds of his countrymen, with the power of a language-genius over his native tongue—a union consummated in Luther—was required, to raise the German language from its degraded, enfeebled condition, to its due place, as the universal medium of intercommunication among Germans of all classes.
About this time, two dialects contended for supremacy—if in a period of such literary stagnation their rivalry can be termed a contest. These were, the Low German, prevalent in Westphalia and Lower Saxony, and the High German, spoken in Upper Saxony. The latter had just obtained the ascendancy over the former in the Diet and the Courts of Justice. The High German, therefore, modifying it however, in his use of it, Luther adopted in his great work; and by the adoption for ever determined the conflict. This great work was the translation of the Bible.