The conditions from which chivalrous so ciety developed in Germany during the 12th century were essentially the same as in Eng land and France. Hence the similarity, too, of ideals: chivalrous valor and virtues, culminating in the ((service of ladies." But although we are still able to follow the paths by which these ideals entered Germany from France, their lit erary expression in Germany is not merely im itative of French models. It is an acknowledged fact that the great German court epics of Hart mann von der Aue (
of Gottfried von Strassburg (Tristan and Is°lde)) and, above all, of Wolfram von Eschenbach (
By introducing into his poetry the healthy sentiment of the folk-song Walther von der Vogelweide attempted to stem the degeneration of the Minnesong into artificial unnaturalness, against which the women of the time themselves seem to have occasionally protested. A similar patriotic protest against the popularity in fash ionable court circles of Franco-Celtic literary models and subjects seems to have led to the final shaping into epic-poems of the old Ger manic hero-legends such as underlie the
ungenlied,' the
The period of classical productions during the latter part of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th centuries was followed by a period of poetic dearth in which great literary activity was, however, not wanting. The place of the chivalrous Minnesingers is taken by the so called Mastersingers, mostly honorable citizens and tradesmen, fond of cultivating the didactic, the mystic and abstruse in their songs. A simi lar decline we notice in epic literature. At the same time we may, however, observe the be ginnings of new forms of literary expression, such as prose, the drama, and folk-song, all of which were developed especially during the 15th and 16th centuries.
During the classical period of Middle High German literature a general uniformity in the language of poetry had been sought and, to a certain degree, attained by the best writers.
It was essential that a like uniformity, displac ing the various dialects, should be established for the literary use of German prose which, from the 13th century on, had been employed more and more in sermons, mystical writings, and in chronicles. According to the testimony of Luther (1483-1546) he found the form of German prose, which became so powerful an instrument in his hands, in the language used by the imperial Saxon chanceries. It was Luther's genius and great personality which as sured this Saxon dialect the future literary pre dominance over the other High German dialects. For the language of his classical translation of the Bible and his powerful church-hymns soon became the authority for the grammarians and the best writers.
The origin of the German drama must be traced to the simple dramatic representations given by the Church at Easter, Christmas, etc., the old Germanic plays having gradually died out. How popular these performances soon be came may be seen from the great number of Easter, Christmas, and Passion plays, of Car nival plays and farces which have come down to us. It is the dramatic form gradually devel oped in these plays which we find also in the dramas of Hans Sachs, the foremost German dramatist and mastersinger of the 16th century. An enthusiastic admirer of Luther and his work, Hans Sachs (1494-1576) did inestimable service to the cause of Reformation by popu larizing its ethical ideas in his numerous dramas, farces, and poems.
The most perfect poetic productions of the 15th and 16th centuries are, however, the (folk-songs), the direct and art less expression in verse of inimitable beauty and simplicity of the very soul of the people, who were then still feeling and thinking as a whole, and were as yet undivided into the learned and the unlearned. The discovery later by Herder of the truth, the ethical force, and the beauty in which human nature reveals itself in these songs, contributed greatly to the re juvenation of derman life and literature during the 18th century and afterward.
Great as the influence of the Renaissance was on the intellectual life of Germany during the 16th century, the indebtedness to this in fluence of the really great writers, of men like Luther, Hans Sachs, and even Johann Fischart, was after all comparatively small. The attempt to reform German literature after the model of the ancients was, however, made during the 17th century by Martin Opitz (1597-1639). The principal features of this attempt, the effects of which are noticeable even in the classical literature of the 18th century, were the breaking with the life and the literary traditions of the past, and the beginning of an entirely new lit erary development. in matters of metrics Opitz's reform was fully justified, this reform meant, nevertheless, mere imitation and the in troduction of a literature of the learned for the learned. The people as a whole were forgotten, if not disregarded; the writing of poetry be came, as with the Neo-Latinists of the 16th century, a conscious labor, the result of reason ing and calculation instead of the product of the free play of inspired imagination.