Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/780

milian is the hero and probably the author, although Melchior Pfinzing is said to have composed the former romance at the emperor's request. The only good poetry of the 14th and 15th centuries was the spirited songs of Halbsuter and Veit Weber, celebrating the victories of Switzerland over Austria and Burgundy.—The progress of classical culture was stimulated at the opening of the 15th century by the establishment of learned societies and schools in different parts of Germany and the Low Countries. Hegius, Langius, Dringeberg, Eeuchlin, Agricola, and other eminent men were among the scholars. Purbach was the first restorer of mathematical science, and his pupil Regiomontanus (Johann Muller) was the greatest mathematician of the 15th century; while Gutenberg was one of its heroes. His invention of the art of printing produced a steadily increasing literary activity, and the books printed in Germany between 1470 and 1500 amounted to several thousand editions.—The 16th century opened with the foundation of the university of Wittenberg (1502), and inaugurated along with the reformation a new era in literature by Luther's translation of the Bible, which he rendered into German so harmonious and beautiful that it is considered even at the present day as a model of terse expression. The High German, as used by Luther, is so pure that all the antiquated and anomalous dialects which had until then alternately predominated in German composition were from that time more or less banished from the language, and the idiom of the Bible has since become the sole medium of cultivated conversation and of German literature. Hymns and psalms were now brought to perfection. That famous religious lyric, Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott, and others of Luther's finest hymns, have become classic, and have found hosts of imitators, the most distinguished of whom were Decius and Speratus, and, in the 17th century, Paul Gerhard. Michael Weiss translated the hymns of Huss into German. The writings of Luther, Zwingli, Johann Arnd, Melanchthon, Ulrich von Hutten, Bugenhagen, Bullinger, and other reformers and scholars, constitute the principal theological literature immediately connected with the reformation. In historical works, the influence of the reformation manifested itself in the superior style and greater comprehensiveness of the universal histories of Sebastian Frank and Sebastian Münster; also in chronicles of Switzerland by Tschudi, and of Bavaria by Aventinus. Frank also published a collection of German proverbs; in which branch of literature, however, he was preceded and excelled by Johann Agricola's Auslegung deutscher Sprüchwörter. Albrecht Dürer's writings unfolded original views of the fine arts in their connection with mathematical science. The principal events in prose belles-lettres were the translations into German of Latin tales, in which Boccaccio, Poggio, and other Italian novelists and poets were for the first time introduced to German readers. Translations of Tasso and Ariosto also appeared. Many of the ancient chivalric stories, which had been published in prose in the 15th century, were republished in the 16th; collections of them were made and called Volksbücher (books for the people), of which the Buch der Liebe (“Book of Love”) became the most popular. The period before and after the reformation was especially fruitful in satirical and allegorical works. One of the most remarkable of the former kind was the Narrenschiff (“Ship of Fools”), by Sebastian Brant of Strasburg (new ed. by Zarncke, Strasburg, 1854), a metrical satire on the follies of the century, which in the opinion of Hallam may possibly have suggested to Erasmus his Encomium Moriæ. Thomas Murner imitated this in his Narrenbeschwörung (“Conjuration of Fools”), and published one of his bitterest satires on Luther under the title Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren (“Of the Great Lutheran Fool”). The fable of Reineke Fuchs (afterward immortalized by Goethe's poem), the origin of which is identified by many authorities with the ancient epic or didactic poem of the Thiersage, and which in different periods had appeared in a variety of forms, was revived in a Low German edition (translated from the Dutch) in the latter part of the 15th century, and was looked upon in the 16th as a satire on the government and state of society of Germany. It was followed by a great number of poems of the same kind, of which one whose characters are fleas is the most witty. Among the purely didactic fabulists were Alberus and Burkard Waldis, both also eminent as composers of hymns. Among the more comic of the Volksbücher was the story of Till Eulenspiegel, relating the freaks, pranks, drolleries, fortunes, and misfortunes of a wandering jester (new ed. by Lappenberg, 1854). The ablest satirical and didactic poet of the 16th century was Johann Fischart, the author of more than 50 works, including the above mentioned fable on fleas (Flohatz), and of a romantic poem (Das glückhafte Schiff) which was regarded as a model for romancers. He has been called the German Rabelais. The story of Faust and the autobiography of Götz von Berlichingen, afterward adorned by Goethe, were also among the popular works of this century. The Volkslieder or popular songs of this period were much admired by Herder, who was the first to collect them. The Meistersänger, upon whom the mantle of the minstrels had fallen since the 14th century, had established metrical schools in various German towns, in the same spirit in which they would have founded guilds of trade. Their highest ideal of poetry was conformity to the rules of versification which were adopted by their school committees. In the 16th century their corporation derived great prestige from the genius of Hans Sachs, the poet and cobbler of Nuremberg (then the headquarters of the