Ger man literature which, as far as its documents are preserved, extends over a period of 15 centuries, may be considered in more than one way a history of the very soul of the German people, reflecting its ideals and innermost aspi rations in the productions of the poets .and writers of the various centuries, and showing at the same time the development and growth of these ideals and aspirations in their influence upon the people as a whole. "Literature)) says Goethe, pis the fragment of all fragments, the least of what happened and was spoken was put in writing, and of that which was written the least has been preserved.° There are many reasons for assuming the existence of a richly developed poetry among the Germanic tribes long before we meet any records of it in writing. The nature of this poetry was, without question, that of the poetic productions of most primitive peoples, inasmuch as it originated with their religious cults, their festivities and games, and showed 'the elements of lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry in their original combination. With this opinion ac cord the accounts given by Tacitus of old Ger manic poetry, according to which its character was partly religious, partly heroic. Later sources assure us of the existence of nuptial poems, funeral hymns, love-songs, and dramatic plays. There was scarcely.a manifestation of old Germanic life which was not accompanied and permeated by poetry. But with the excep tions of a number of charms and incantationS, such as the Merseburger Zauberspriiche, little of this oldest poetry has been handed down to us. Its metrical form was. the alliterative verse, as is shown not only by these charms, but also by numerous ancient riddles, proverbs, and the richly developed gnomology of the vanous Ger manic tribes.
The alliterative verse, whose origin was pre sumably contemporary with the development of the Germanic word-accent, was the metrical form also of the old heroic poetry that flour ished chiefly during the time of the migrations, the truly heroic period in the history of the Germanic tribes. The heroic song was culti vated by a special class of rhapsodists whom we find mentioned among the Goths, the Fran conians, the Anglo-Saxons, etc. Their lays ate almost entirely lost to us, but from the Beowulf and the later Nibelungenlied and the GuArue, all of which originated among these rhapsodists, we may still form an idea of the •greatness of their poetic productions.. A fragmentary relic of this early period, though not recorded in writing until about 800, is the Hildebrandshed, the highly dramatic account in alliterative verse of the fight between and Hadu brand, father and son.
The chief reason why so much of the oldest German poetry was lost or supprested must be ascribed to the Church. The introduction of Christianity in Germany meant the decline of popular national poetry as well as the rise of new ideals resulting from the acquaintance with Christian religious life and ancient civilization. Unfortunately it was not the civilization of classic antiquity, but that of the decaying Roman Empire with which the youthful German people were brought into contact The earliest German written literature was produced by the clergy, and its chief character, therefore, is learned and religious. As the old
est document of this kind may be mentioned the translation of the Bible• into the Gothic lan guage by Wulfila (+ 381), of which, however only fragments are preserved. They are of the greatest value not only from a linguistic point of view, but also as a document of the in tellectual character of the Goths, whose name .quite unjustly became synonymous with "bar barous? Among the earliest products of Christian poetry in Germany may be mentioned the 'Heliand,) an epic poem in alliterative verse of the 9th century, possessing considerable literary merit in its representation of the story of Christ as the story of a powerful Germanic king. The 'Heliand) was written in Old Saxon, a dialect agreeing in its consonant system with English and Dutch, but differing from Old High Ger man, which was destined to form the basis of the future literary language of Germany. It was due chiefly to the patriotic efforts of Charlemagne, who collected the old Germanic heroic songs and began the writing of a Ger man grammar, that a certain unity in the lit erary use of the various Old High German dialects was attempted even at this early period, the Franconian dialect attaining, of course, a certain preponderance in this literary language.
Of less poetic value than the (Heliand,' though displaying the marks of serious literary industry and patriotic sentiment, is the lienbuch' by. Otfried (ca. 868), a monk in the monastery of Weissenburg. He was the first to employ the rhyme in his work; the structure of his lines, still show, however, the rhythmic char acteristics of the old alliterative verse.
Otfried's complaint in the Latin dedication of his book to Archbishop Liutbert about the lade of grammatical rules in his mother tongue makes it quite evident that even then a chasm existed between clerical learning and native German speech and poetry. The learned dis regard for the poetry, of the people, the opposi tion between artificial and popular poetry, seems to have continued during the loth and part of the 11th centuries, although in the monastery of Saint Gall we find a laudable exception. Here lived the greatest of the early German gram marians, Notker (4' 1022), and Here the monk Ekkehard I Of 973) turned into Latin hexame terii one of the famous old Germanic hero songs, the song of 'Walther and Hildegunde.) Popular German poetry did not, however, cease to exist during this period; it was culti vated by the Spielleute or traveling minstrels, a class of poets less dignified than the old German rhapsodists, but equally influential. They were the first to seize upon a subject matter which a period, fond of fabulous tales of adventure, as was the age of the Crusades prodaked in great abundance. Thus a number of epic poems originated of which the charming Rother' is the most important. In the meantime the clergy, who always had a strong antipathy against the minstrels and the worldly spirit of their poetry, turned their literary efforts also in the direction of the epic, choos ing their subjects partly from the stories of the Bible, partly from history. But the exclusive literary predominance of the clergy soon had to make room for chivalry which gradually as sumed the leadership in matters of literature.