(4) Holy Roman Empire / Germany: Notable Writers and Notable Literary Developments

935 - 973 - Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim (All Facts)

• (Catholic) Saxon (German) Canoness (Writer)

• She was the first known German woman writer

• She was the first European playwright since antiquity

• She wrote six Latin plays

  • which dealt chiefly with Christian virgin martyrs

  • which included some

    • graphic torture scenes similar to those in early accounts of the lives of the saints

    • moving scenes of the conversion of prostitutes

  • including

    • Abraham

    • Callimachus

    • Dulcitius

    • Gallicanus

    • Panutius

    • Sapientia

• She wrote other works including

  • narrative poems

  • legends of the saints

1200s - Nibelungenlied (All Facts)

• Middle High German epic of the Holy Roman Empire

• Written by an anonymous Austrian with manuscripts originating at the time

• Its hero is Siegfried

• It has connections with Scandinavian legends

• It has influenced many writers and composers, most notably Richard Wagner

1280s - Tannhauser (All Facts)

• Knight and Poet of the Minnesinger School, whose exploits were described in legend and ballad at the time

1250 - 1318 - Heinrich Frauenlob (All Facts)

• Representative of the school of middle-class poets who succeeded the knightly Minnesingers

• He and his school adapted Minnesinger traditions to poems dealing with theology and philosophy

1458 - 1521 - Sebastian Brant (All Facts)

• German Humanist Writer

1494 - Sebastian Brant: Ship of Fools (All Facts)

• German satirical writing which reached the common man in the popular and influential namesake work, which mocked vice in rhyming couplets

1488 - 1523 - Ulrich von Hutten (All Facts)

• German Humanist Poet

  • He came from a wealthy Franconian noble family

  • He studied Greek and Latin in Bologna

• He was noted for the elegance and eloquence of his Latin poetry and prose

• He never ceased to stress the warrior code of a nobleman of the Holy Roman Empire

• He was a staunch opponent of the Roman Catholic Church

  • He was something of a hothead and had long had a reputation for ferocious anti-clericism

1505 - 1562 - George Wickram (All Facts)

• German Poet and Novelist

  • He is considered by some to be the first German novelist or to have written the first German novel

1557 - George Wickram: Der Goldfaden (All Facts)

• Work which is regarded as the earliest attempt in German literature to create modern middle-class fiction which ultimately took the place of the decadent medieval chivalric romance

• Work which some historians consider the first German novel