Contents	6
	Preface	7
	Starting point	7
	Two principles	7
	Guidelines for the account	8
	Medieval Literature	9
	A Romantic rediscovery	9
	Germanic Pagan poetry, heroic lays	13
	From the Carolingian Renaissance to the Hohenstaufen empire: cultural and political foundations	16
	The emergence of Old High German and Early New High German literature out of the spirit of translation	20
	Epic literature of the Hohenstaufen period	26
	An outline of late medieval literature	50
	Humanism and the Reformation	61
	O Jahrhundert, o Wissenschaften! (Oh Century! Oh Sciences!) Renaissance Humanism	61
	Renaissance Humanism	61
	‘Die Grundsuppe des Wuchers, der Dieberei und Räuberei’: (‘The fount of all usury, theft and robbery’)—social criticism and the Reformation programme From Reformatio Sigismundi to Hans Sachs	66
	‘Derhalben musst du, gemeiner Mann, selber gelehrt werden’ (‘ Therefore, common man, you yourself must be taught’): the discovery of the word as weapon	71
	‘Dass wir frei sind und es sein wollen’ (‘That we are free and wish so to be’): pamphlet literature	73
	Two reformers, one Reformation propagandist	75
	‘Sie hand gemacht ein Singschul’—Meistersang, popular song, congregational hymns, confessional lyric poetry	82
	congregational hymns, confessional lyric poetry	82
	‘Der Jugend Gottes Wort und Werk mit Lust einzuprägen’ (‘To instil enjoyment of God’s word and works into youth’): Reformation drama	88
	Schwank and the pre-novel romance	92
	Baroque Literature	99
	Seventeenth-century Germany	99
	Literature and society	103
	Literary reform	107
	Poetry and rhetoric	111
	Lyric poetry	113
	On tragedies and comedies	127
	The novel	134
	Aufklärung: The Enlightenment	143
	What is new politically and socially?	143
	Changes in the reading public—the ‘free’ writer makes his appearance — the emergence of a literature market	144
	Literary theories of the Enlightenment: From Gottsched through Lessing to Sturm und Drang	150
	The application of Enlightenment ideas in drama	154
	Individual experience in the novel	164
	Subjectivity and social criticism in lyric poetry	167
	Didactic fables	169
	The emergence of children’s and young people’s literature	170
	Rationalism and Empfindsamkeit (Sensibility): the dialectic of the Enlightenment movement	171
	The Kunstepoche	175
	Between revolution and restoration	175
	Responses to the French Revolution: Classicism—Romanticism— Jacobinism	176
	The Weimar classical period	181
	The road to the	188
	(the novel of education)	188
	The blending of the dramatic and the epic in the novella	191
	Romanticism as a way of life and of writing	193
	Women authors of the Romantic age	200
	The Mainz Republic and the literary practice of the Jacobins	202
	On the periphery of classicism, Romanticism and Jacobinism: Jean Paul — Kleist — Hölderlin	206
	The Late Romantic period	213
	A stock-taking of the age: Goethe’s late works	216
	The admiration of the classics and the impact of classicism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries	220
	Vormärz: The Run-Up To 1848	229
	The dawn of the Industrial Revolution	229
	The literature market, professional authorship and censorship	233
	What is literature good for now?	237
	The curse of being a poet, or: from history-writer to maker of history	242
	Enfant perdu: Heinrich Heine	246
	The end of art, or a new age and new art	251
	The agenda of political poetry	258
	Criticism of political poetry: the antagonism between political tendency and literary practice	263
	Literature and socialism before and after the 1848 revolution	266
	Review of an age: new writing styles in prose, lyric poetry and drama	272
	Entertainment literature, literature for children and young people, women’s literature	278
	1848 and the shattering of the Enlightenment perspective	283
	Realism and the Gründerzeit	285
	The contradictory overall situation	285
	Literary trends and the intellectual life of the era: national and liberal education instead of general freedom?	288
	‘Attitudes’ as a literary response to social developments: ‘spirituality’ (Innerlichkeit), ‘distance’ and the danger of ‘restorative utopia’	294
	Two masterpieces as differing representatives of the age: Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (Mozart on the Way to Prague) and Der Heilige (The Saint)	301
	How can politically committed writers write and whom can they reach?	305
	Lyric poetry in the age of realism	311
	‘Ich und Du’ (‘Thou and I’)	314
	Idea and reality in the drama of realism	318
	Folk literature and the village story	322
	The evolution of mass literature after 1848 and its objectives	327
	Under the Banner of Imperialism	336
	The world of letters between 1890 and World War I	336
	Workers’ literature	338
	What is Naturalism?	342
	Did the middle class have room for art and literature?	350
	Was there a ‘literary revolt’?	355
	Folk-monumental and aesthetic-decorative trends	360
	The complex self and its relationship to the ‘world’	365
	The literary revolt of Expressionism	372
	A review of the age of the middle class (Thomas Mann, Sternheim, Heinrich Mann)	377
	Literature in the Weimar Republic	381
	After the defeat in World War I	381
	Literature as a commodity	382
	Writers organise themselves	385
	‘Censorship is not practised’ (Eine Zensur findet nicht statt): the persecution of writers	387
	Literature in media competition	389
	The first signs of a working-class revolutionary literature	392
	Developmental tendencies in prose	401
	Drama—Zeitstück (the contemporary play), Volksstück (the popular play) and Lehrstück (the didactic play)	410
	Between artistry and political commitment—lyric poetry	417
	Literature in the Third Reich	424
	The National Socialist seizure of power	424
	Nazi cultural policy	425
	The ‘aestheticisation of politics’, or fascist politics as a total work of art	428
	literature	430
	Literature of ‘internal emigration’	431
	Anti-fascist underground literature	435
	German Literature Written in Exile	438
	The exodus	438
	Living conditions in exile	440
	The struggle for a united front among exiled authors	442
	Alliance policy	443
	The Expressionism-Realism debate: controversies over a new conception of themselves and literature among exiled authors	445
	The special role of the historical novel	448
	Anti-fascist literary practice	451
	The role of Bertolt Brecht	457
	Post-1945 German Literature	464
	‘When the war was over’	464
	Administration instead of revolution: key features of social and cultural policy in the occupied zones	465
	Capitalism instead of socialism: the factors determining political and cultural restoration in the Federal Republic	467
	‘Zero-point’, radical change or continuity? Traditional features of Gertnan post- war literature	471
	Politico-cultural journalism	477
	(‘literature of the ruins’)	478
	Gathering and reconstruction	485
	The reinstatement of exile literature and a return to the literary heritage	486
	The novel takes stock of the age	488
	Lyric poetry after dark times	490
	Theatre caught between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ pedagogy	493
	Literature of the German Democratic Republic	496
	The ‘society of literature’ model: life between social pedagogy and censorship	496
	The 1950s: anti-fascist consensus and coming to terms with new production methods	505
	Socialist realism versus formalism	508
	The Bitterfeld Way	510
	Continued writing on Nazi and war themes	512
	From novel of socialist construction to	513
	Between affirmation and utopia: the upheaval of the 1960s	520
	The New Economic System of 1963 and literature	521
	A self-assured stock-taking of the GDR and the reinstatement of the self in prose	523
	The theatre without Brecht: production stories and parable plays	531
	Sensible Wege (Sensitive Paths) in lyric poetry	535
	Literature of the 1970s and 1980s: against ‘instrumental reason’	540
	The eighth Party Congress, Biermann’s deprivation of citizenship and its consequences	542
	Glasnost in the GDR? Cultural policy in the 1980s	546
	Fact or fiction? Aspects of narrative critical of civilisation	548
	Theatre against suppression and forgetting	559
	Lyric poetry against a symmetrical world	563
	Born into it and dropping out of it: young literature of the GDR	566
	Literature of the Federal Republic	570
	The literary scene	570
	Literature and the reader	576
	Theatrical plans	577
	Literary criticism	578
	Institutions of literary socialisation	579
	Cultural policy	580
	Cultural jurisdiction	581
	Literature versus politics—the writing style of the 1950s	582
	The problems of lyric poetry	582
	Coming to terms with the past and criticising the present: themes and traditions of the novel	587
	Theatre without drama	593
	The radio play: between dream and self-destruction	596
	The politicisation of literature (1961–8)	599
	Political theatre: recent history as theatrical event	600
	‘The novel: ‘Between Realism and the grotesque’	607
	Surface destruction: the theory and practice of concrete poetry	621
	The ‘death of literature’: 1968	625
	A ‘shift of tendency’: literature between contemplation and alternative lifestyles ( 1969 – 77)	627
	The discovery of the first person: between autobiography and	629
	The ‘literarised’ revolt	632
	Everyday lyric poetry: political lyric poetry—no contradiction	635
	Aesthetics fights back: the literature of the 1980s	638
	‘Alternative histories’	650
	1992 Update: The Unity and Diversity of German Literature	655
	Further Reading	662
	General reading	662
	Medieval literature	662
	Humanism and Reformation	663
	Baroque literature	664
	The Enlightenment	664
	Literature in the Weimar Republic	667
	Literature in the Third Reich	668
	German literature in exile	669
	Literature of the German Democratic Republic	669
	Literature of the Federal Republic	670
	Index	673
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