FIFTH PERIOD (from Opitz to Klopstock, 1624 1748). The recreation of literature after the Thirty Years' War was begun in the pedantic spirit of Opitz by a literary society of university men, chiefly at first in Hamburg and Leipzig. The names that emerge from the general mediocrity are those of the religious poet Gerhardt (1607 76), the novelist Grimmelshausen (1625-76), and toward its close the critic Gottsched (1700-66), whom this period leaves engaged in a controversy with the heralds of the new period, Bodmer (1698-1783) and the school of Zurich, as to whether French or English poets were the most worthy of imitation, since it was admitted that one must imitate somebody. This period closes, or rather the classical period begins, with the publication of the first cantos of Klopstock's Mes sias.
The Thirty Years' War deferred the develop ment of the national consciousness which the Ref ormation had promised. For political or social as pirations the conditions were unfavorable, as they were also to the spread or even the maintenance of culture. It was natural that men of a literary cast of mind should take refuge in the con solations of pietism and should express their emotions in religious lyric. Besides Gerhardt the chief Protestant hymn-writers of the seven teenth century are Johann Rist (d.1667), Joa chim Neander (d.1688), and Louise of Branden burg, wife of the Great Elector (d.1667). The best Catholic lyrist is the Jesuit Friedrich Spec, whose work belongs to the war period, for he died in his prime in 1635.
Secular poetry either sinks into vulgarity or loses touch with the people through academic af fectations. First of the pedantic academics was the Pruchtbringende Gesellschaf t, formed on the Della Cruscan model under the patronage of Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau (1617). This found fashion able imitation, and even in bourgeois Nuremberg the Pegnitzschiifer displaced the ancient order of Mastersingers in popular regard. The first name worthy poets to arise in these academic schools were Weckherlin (d.1653) and Opitz (d.1639).
The appearance of the latter's prosodical treatise, Die Deutsche Poeterei, is sufficiently epoch-mark ing to form the starting-point of a period. It was the trusted guide of several generations of verse-makers. Among his followers, the Silesian School, the chief are Paul Fleming (d.1640) and Andreas Gryphius (d.1664), who extended the principles of Opitz to the drama and was first to introduce the 'regular' five-act tragedy to Germany. To the Silesian School may be reck oned also the epigrammatist Logan (d.1655) and the psalmist Joachim Rachel (d.1699). The Low German humorist Lauremherg (d.1659) may be named also, and Philip von Zesen (d.1689), who founded in Hamburg an academic literary asso ciation, Deutschgesinnte Gesellschaft, to cultivate linguistic purity.
The first Silesian School, the purists, was succeeded by a second, the Euphuists, or better, `Marinists,' disciples of the extravagant Italian stylist Marini. The first impulse to this aber ration came from Nuremberg and the Pegnitz schlifer. Its noteworthy names are Hoffmanns waldau (d.1679) and Lohenstein (d.1683). A little later French influence asserts itself, and Boileau finds disciples of his Art pottique in Canitz (d.1699), Besser (d.1729), and Klinig (d.1744).
Of the prose of this period Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus (1659) has almost alone as serted successfully a right to live. But beside this satirical novelist of the Thirty Years' War may be named Moscherosch (1601-69), for his imitation of the satires of Quevedo, the historians Sigmund von Birken and Gottfried Arndt, the Persian traveler Olearius, the eccentric Protes tant pastor Sehupp, and the priest Abraham a Sancta Clara, and the voluminous but unreadable romance writers, Buehholtz, von Ziegler, and Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick, to be followed by multitudinous `Robinsonaden,' in imitation of Defoe's masterpiece.