Forschungsstelle "Westfälischer Friede": Dokumentation

DOCUMENTATION | Exhibitions: 1648 - War and Peace in Europe
Essay Volumes > Tome II: Art and culture

KLAUS GARBER
The Origins of German National Literature at the Beginning of the Thirty Years' War

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the symptoms of calamity were beginning to amass throughout Europe: comets, inauspicious conjunctions of the heavenly bodies, floods, miscarriages, mythical creatures, abnormalities in nature and deformities among the population. Newspapers, broadsheets and pamphlets were full of the strange and unheard of. Painting too seized upon the subject, as did song, storytelling and drama, all contributing to the growing climate of fear. While Ulrich von Hutten greeted the sixteenth century with optimism: "O century! O sciences! 'Tis a joy to live", Ägidius Albertinus marked the arrival of the seventeenth in a somewhat darker tone: "O world, O impure world; O evil, despicable world; O stinking, wretched flesh".

All around was a sense of impending disaster. And with good reason. In 1608, the Evangelical Union was formed, one year before the emergence of the Catholic League. Protestants and Catholics were preparing for war, seeking allies at home and abroad. In 1610, Henry IV was murdered, having converted from Protestantism to Catholicism in order to take the French throne. The most heinous atrocities were committed in the French civil war between Huguenots and Catholics, culminating in 1572 in the Saint Bartholomew's day massacre in Paris, in which thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered. Spain and the Low Countries had been locked in decades of merciless combat, ending with the division of the Low Countries into a Catholic (Belgium) and a Protestant part (the Netherlands). In England, the Protestant queen had her Catholic rival, Mary Queen of Scots, imprisoned and then finally sent to the scaffold in 1587. These signs of approaching catastrophe had been developing for more than half a century B fifty years which had seen Christianity split, nations collapse into civil war, thrones topple and certainties which had existed for hundreds of years hurled into the maelstrom of all-consuming hatred.

European literature was closely bound up in this drama shaking the continent. Yet there is still no major study of the wars of hegemony and religious supremacy as mirrored in the literature of the day, surely one of the great objectives of a truly European literary science. The origins of European national literature in the early modern era can be found in Italy. In 1494, the country was invaded by the French, who took the city of Naples. The Spanish soon followed suit. Sannazaro's Arcadia (1504), misunderstood as a sentimental and insipid pastoral, responds in allegory to the fall of Naples, while the giants of Italian art, headed by Michelangelo, joined in addressing the subject of a humbled Italy. In 1492, the Spanish took Granada, the last bastion of the Moors in Europe, where they forced the local Jews and Moslems to either convert or flee. Such was the violence of Spanish repression that echoes of the period can be heard in Cervantes' Don Quixote. In France, a whole range of writings responded to civil war and the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's day. Yet who today is aware of the shattering works of the Calvinist D'Aubigné? The chaotic world of Rabelais, the greatest narrator of the sixteenth century, would be inconceivable without the most traumatic events of the post-classical world. Even the heroic, pastoral harmony pursued by Honoré d'Urfé in his five-volume Astrée B the precursor to the court novel of the seventeenth century B comes across as a laborious effort to bring order to the chaos. Nor was it any different in England. Both Edmund Spenser and Philipp Sidney used the pastoral eclogue (The Shepheardes Calendar), pastoral romance (Arcadia) and the epic poem (The Faerie Queene) to pay homage to Queen Elizabeth I and, more importantly, to encourage vigorous action against the resurgence of Roman Catholicism. And what of the greatest writer to emerge between Dante and Goethe? Could we decipher the inexhaustible works of William Shakespeare, with its enigmatic humour and cryptic gravity, without some understanding of the earthly and metaphysical turmoil suffered by his generation? [1]

Throughout Europe, the profile of national literature developed amid the upheaval of the sixteenth century. The only exception was, of course, Italy, which had already entered the modern era of literature in grand style with the work of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio in the late Dugento and Trecento. Germany, on the other hand, came late to this century of change B a century which was to set the course for the future development of Europe. Its response to the humanist impulses emanating from Italy, however, was rapid. The Empire, the spiritual and secular worlds, but above all B just as in Italy B the cities, enjoyed a revival of classical culture and literature for a multitude of reasons. This development led to a period of blossoming in cities such as Nuremberg, Augsburg, Strasbourg and Basle between the middle of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. It was a period which was, to some extent, unique in Europe, the result of the regional diversity of the old Empire, and of its cities in particular. However, just as the literary craft had been mastered, and a command of Latin poetry acquired through practice B to which Conrad Celtis and others urged the transition to the German language B Martin Luther arrived to cast his spell over the nation. Luther worked the German language like no other before or after him, enriching it and blending it into a single entity. The immediate fruit of his work was the vernacular poetry of the sixteenth century as developed by the likes of Hans Sachs, Jörg Wickram or Johann Fischart, to say nothing of contemporary hymns, sermons and religious tracts. [2]

It was, however, a language quite unsuitable for the promotion of classical culture within the German linguistic and educational sphere. Thus, as the earthquake unleashed by Luther subsided, Germany was left to retrace its steps to the path left in 1500. It was a journey which was to take more than half a century B by which time the situation in Europe had radically changed. Italy, Spain and Portugal, France and England, even the Netherlands, fresh from victory in its war with Spain, had all developed their own national literatures based on the classical works. Pietro Bembo and Jacopo Sannazaro, Garcilaso de la Vega and Fray Luis de León, Francisco de Sá de Miranda and Jorge de Montemayor, Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, Edmund Spenser and Philipp Sidney, Jan van der Noot and Daniel Heinsius: the names of those involved in the revival of national poetry were familiar to every educated person in Europe, and therefore also in Germany. The ground to be made up was enormous. [3]

If we consider the interrelation of historical events, it appears as almost a wonder how, once this problem had been finally addressed, it was resolved with such rapidity and success. Yet there is a view frequently aired, even among specialist circles, that German "baroque literature" as it is known B despite bearing all the hallmarks of humanist literature B was weak, stunted and not worthy of comparison with its European contemporaries. Without clouding our assessment with patriotic sentiment, it is clear that these insults are based more on ignorance and lack of study than any deficiency in the writing concerned. This period in German literature had the great misfortune not to coincide with a period of national revival similar to that which occurred in neighbouring countries. Hence, unlike in Spain and France, there were no "classic" works of German literature produced during the seventeenth century. Those works which now bear this equally difficult label did not begin to appear in Germany until around 1800. The literature of the seventeenth century was combined with its sentimental precursors and a corresponding conception of art based on feeling and experience to become the benchmark and critical standpoint for a humanist literature which had developed under wholly different circumstances. Hence its disappearance from the collective literary memory of the German people, with only such names as Gryphius, Grimmelshausen or Paul Gerhard re-emerging from time to time. It is a period which, as a whole, has failed to gain admittance to the cultural history of the German nation as a valuable legacy of great literary art. All the more reason then to examine the difficult conditions in which this literature was born, in which it developed, and which provided its dominant theme: war and peace in Europe, in Germany, in the cities and on the land B and the consequences for the development of the arts amid the battle and bloodshed. [4]

To consider the early literature produced in the German territories of the Holy Roman Empire and the German-speaking lands extending beyond into the east requires the ability to move easily between diverse cultural spheres. The beginnings of the new German poetry which emerged around 1600 can be found on the edges of the German-speaking world: in Bohemia and Silesia to the east and in the Palatinate and upper Rhine to the west. The reason seems obvious. At the border of any nation, the desire to emphasis national identity is always great. While this may be true in this case, it is not the only reason. In the early part of the modern era, all cultural development was bound up with religious and therefore denominational issues. Since the establishment of the Council of Trent and the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), reformed European Catholicism had developed an aggressive cultural policy aimed at winning back lost territory. It was a policy which was put to work throughout Europe, and which therefore continued to encourage the use of Latin in literature, particularly in drama. Playwrights such as Jakob Masen, Jakob Gretser and Jakob Bidermann well illustrate the type of conscience-rattling theatre the Jesuits were capable of. From the days of Wycliffe and Hus, Protestantism had grown large by translating the Bible into the vernacular languages of Europe. It was therefore reasonable that any attempt to develop a national literature movement was more likely to thrive under Protestantism than Roman Catholicism.

It is interesting to note that it was those authors and territories influenced by Calvinism which took the helm within the Protestant movement. To a certain extent, this was due to the good international links between the reformed lands and kingdoms, however it may also be attributed to a greater level of political and cultural education. The Lutherans were much more disposed towards co-operation with the Catholics than were the Calvinists. Indeed, the disagreements between the Protestant factions at times appear more violent and irremediable than those between the Lutherans and orthodox Roman Catholicism. Whatever the case, we may proceed from the view now generally accepted by historians that, in the Calvinist milieu and those circles sympathetic to it, there was an acute awareness that the Catholic offensive had to be repelled in the national idiom. Doing so, it was thought, would help unite the Protestants, while presenting Protestantism as the champion of the legitimate interests of the nation. How else can we explain the affinity between the spokesmen of the new literature and the reformed royal dynasties and nobility of Bohemia and Silesia, of the Palatinate and upper Rhine, and soon also of central Germany, Anhalt, Hesse and so on. The term "literature" is, of course, difficult to define in these troubled times. The borders between "literature" and the popular press are fluid. And just as the poets of the time earned their livings as jurists, diplomats, secretaries, royal advisors, barristers, so they took up the pen to compose speeches, polemical prefaces, commentaries, sometimes even pamphlets, all of which were aimed at serving the cause of a "national" literature as well as "national" politics. During this period, the great works of classical literature were used for translation and exercises in stylistic composition to a much greater degree than was previously recognised. These exercises are full of political symbolism which can only be deciphered through the study of the art of figurative or allegorical writing. [5]

Let us now examine a few brief examples. Bohemia under Rudolf II, as once under Charles IV, was a centre of European culture. [6] In 1601, the first collection of new German verse, Theobald Hock's or Hoeck's Schönes Blumenfeld (The Beautiful Field of Flowers) appeared under a pseudonym and with a fictitious place of publication. [7] The author had every reason to hide his tracks. He was one of the key figures and contacts working on behalf of Christian of Anhalt to promote an anti-Habsburg front, principally among the Austrian and Bohemian nobility. Men such as this can be found throughout the early development of the new German literature. From 1600 onwards, Hoeck was in the service of the Bohemian magnate Peter Wok von Rosenberg, a man who wielded as much influence as Karl von Zierotin. Hoeck's use of language is still slightly awkward and stiff, while the diversity and didacticism of his subject matter is a clear reference to the bourgeois poetry of the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, this partisan of the Calvinist cause had the future development of a German national poetry movement in mind:

Among the regions which enjoyed close political and cultural contact with Bohemia was Silesia, a land thick with secular and religious principalities, mediatised noble houses and cities, with the metropolis of Breslau (Wroclaw) as its capital. The country had been a Nebenland or subordinate region of Bohemia since 1526 under Habsburg and therefore Catholic sovereignty. However, the political situation did not prevent Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists from co-existing in the princely houses, among the nobility and in the cities until well into the seventeenth century. Perhaps this may help explain the blossoming of Christian mysticism on Silesian soil and in neighbouring Lusatia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was the home of Caspar Schwenckfeld, Abraham von Franckenberg, Daniel Czepko and Angelus Silesius to mention but a few. The influence of Jakob Böhme could also be felt from nearby Görlitz. Inter-denominational harmony was achieved in Silesia in the form of a more spiritualised faith which, it is safe to assume, was a contributing factor in the development of German-language literature, a movement which found such fertile soil in Silesia. [9]

Yet this was not the only factor at work. The multitude of courts, estates and cities required educated personnel. Silesia, however, did not have its own university. Students had no option but to head west; the less well-off to Wittenberg or Leipzig, while the more wealthy made for the Calvinist strongholds of Leiden in the Netherlands, Heidelberg, Basle or the Academy of Strasbourg, which became a university in 1621. No other country had such a widely scattered, cosmopolitan and outgoing scholastic community during the late humanist period as Silesia. Then, as the Gymnasium in Beuthen an der Oder (Bytom) was founded in 1614 by the enlightened and pro-educational prince Georg von Schönaich B a man who shared the same conciliatory approach to the inter-denominational divide as Erasmus and Melanchthon B Silesia had at last a respected seat of learning which was in many ways equivalent to a university. The Gymnasium had three modernising features: a) the first-ever chair in the study of piety (pietas), set up with the express aim of overcoming inter-denominational conflict; b) the first-ever chair in ethics (mores), charged with developing the modern skills required at court and in public service; c) an interest in and openness towards the aspirations of national literature both in Germany and abroad. [10]

No less a man than Martin Opitz received his first encouragement to pursue the goal of a German national literature from his teacher, Caspar Dornau, and his patron, Tobias Scultetus von Bregoschitz. [11] Opitz presented his programme in a speech delivered in Latin (as was customary in the academic world) at the Beuthen Gymnasium one year before the outbreak of war: A bellicose, chauvinistic tone? Most certainly not. What we have here is an adaptation of familiar and well-established humanist conventions, which demanded reference to noble forebears and praise of the native tongue. Now, even on German soil, there was an awareness of the fact B incontrovertible for every humanist since the era of Dante and Petrarch B that a developing nation, and therefore at last Germany, required its own national literature dealing with subjects of interest to the educated populace. High among these subjects were the great national events of civil war and the militarisation of the Christian denominations.

The German writers now required a stimulating milieu in which to develop power and perspective in their literary work. Opitz, like many other Silesians, found this environment in the west, in the Palatinate. [13] The great metropolis of the Palatine electorate, Heidelberg, was regarded as the most brilliant court in the Empire. Its electoral princes were among the first converts to the Reformed church of John Calvin, and the region spearheaded the development of international Calvinism on German soil, creating close ties between the Palatine court, university, councillors and academics and the Huguenots in France, the reformed church in the Netherlands, and the Protestants in Tudor England under Elizabeth I and Stuart England under James I. In 1613, the daughter of James I married the young Elector Palatine, Frederick V. Their wedding was a spectacular formal celebration which sent waves far beyond the borders of the Empire. It also heightened the rivalry with the neighbouring capital of Stuttgart, where another great German writer had placed his literary services at the disposal of the Württemberg cause: Georg Rudolf Weckherlin. Weckherlin soon left Germany to settle in England, and has therefore become somewhat overshadowed by Martin Opitz. [14]

Chief among the Heidelberg literary circle was the poet Melissus Schede. True to the humanist tradition, Schede composed his great lyrical works in Latin, yet he was also in contact with the Pléiade poets at the French court who wrote in their native language. Schede also began to write in German, setting an example for those younger poets who admired and emulated him, but who were also familiar with Weckherlin, knew of the poetry of Johann Fischart of Strasbourg, and who welcomed Martin Opitz and his companions from Silesia. Their names may be long forgotten, but that of Martin Opitz lives on. [15] It was he who found the words for this incendiary literary programme, and he who established valid rules for the various poetic forms. Yet all were united in the conviction that the time had come for the development of a purely German poetry, whose function it was to help warn of the threat posed to the Empire, to the unity of the nation by the approach of militant Catholicism under the leadership of Spain. Julius Wilhelm Zincgref, the most talented and versatile of these German poets, preserved the early endeavours of the movement in a collection of verse. [16] He was also aware of a poem by Weckherlin addressed to the German nobility courageously prepared to defend the German cause: This piece is as innocent of the charge of xenophobia as the work of any other writer in the humanist tradition. Here, the poet rouses his compatriots to finally recognise their own qualities, as their neighbours have done, and to safeguard the peace whilst remaining alert to the enemy. An address to the nobility was the perfect vehicle for this message. A similar sentiment was expressed by the publisher in a lengthy Vermahnung zur Tapferkeit (Exhortation to Valour), which concluded the collection and which describes the valiant defender: To the modern ear, these sentiments are highly questionable. But again, they cannot simply be dismissed as a lust for blood and death or a scorn of life and happiness. With the carnage of war at hand, and therefore manifest in his poetry, the author seeks to halt further devastation by calling on his readership to acknowledge and safeguard their freedom, both internal and external, as the most valuable of possessions. During this period of history, the most dreaded and merciless power of repression was Spain. Between the lines of this generation of German poets can be glimpsed the fear of the Inquisition and the suppression of religious freedom B or indeed the suppression of any independent philosophy or way of life a theme which these German authors spelled out in their popular writings.

Yet these same poets, the driving force behind the development of German literature on the eve of the Thirty Years' War, with their predilection for themes of personal and national autonomy, were not without their own network of connections and contacts. Parallel to the efforts of literature, the German princes were also engaged in creating a broad national and politico-cultural unity on the eve of war. This too is a fact long since forgotten, despite being worthy of greater acknowledgement and inclusion in our written history. As the humanists in Italy set out with the aim of methodically reviving classical culture, a number of academies were established under royal patronage in which artists and writers could discuss new directions in literature, philosophy and art and find patrons for their work. [19] Similar institutions were founded in Germany as early as 1500. [20] In the seventeenth century, the development of a national language and literature received its greatest impetus from the various literary associations founded in cities such as Strasbourg, Hamburg, Königsberg, Nuremberg and so on, which were unfortunately christened Sprachgesellschaften or "linguistic societies" by the philologists of the nineteenth century.

The most important of these associations, the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (Fruitful Society), was formed in 1617, deriving its name from the Florentine Accademia della Crusca. [21] Its success in reviving the German language and its literature is without doubt, yet its significance goes much deeper than that. Apart from representatives of the nobility and scholars such as Opitz, the Gesellschaft's hundreds of members included the Protestant and subsequently Calvinist Imperial princes of Hesse, Brandenburg and Silesia. The Anhalt princes, in particular Ludwig of Anhalt-Köthen, provided its organisational framework and agenda. Apart from its specific aims concerning German language and poetry, much emphasis was placed on the old German (teutsche) notions of virtue and loyalty, faith and courage. So far, German philology has been unable to make much of these concepts. Yet they correspond entirely with the ideas promoted by the poets and scholars of the time. Again, the aim was to weld the German people into one nation, and remind them of their heroic past in preparation for the enormous challenge and struggle that lay ahead. The national concerns of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft can only be viewed in a proper light if we consider the enormous efforts made in the course of the sixteenth century to bridge the denominational divide; efforts which began with the reign emperor Charles V and his brother Ferdinand I, and continued with the work of conciliatory theologians such as Melanchthon and his humanist contemporaries throughout the Empire. On the eve of this great European war, these attempts at reconciliation represent one final, moving effort to bring unity. Hence the strict order that theologians should not be admitted to the society lest they introduce further discord, and hence the vague, teutsche exhortations, intended to heal old divisions and welcome all to the national cause. Where unity threatened to break down, the Protestant and in particular the Calvinist nobility of the Empire needed a forum where agreements could be reached quickly and focused action decided. With the exception of Freemasonry in the eighteenth century, the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft was the most comprehensive national politico-cultural initiative on German soil at any stage during the old Empire.

All these efforts were doomed to failure. But before the country could be sucked into the maelstrom of war, a breathtaking piece of political opportunism took place in Germany, the like of which has rarely been seen. It was an event in which the German poets were all more or less directly involved. Had it succeeded, not only German literature, but the whole of German history would have embarked on a completely different course. [22] In August 1619, the young Elector Palatine, Frederick, supported by his councillors, Court Chaplain Abraham Scultetus and those poets close to the court such as Opitz or Zincgref, made preparations for the march from Heidelberg to Prague, where Frederick would receive the royal dignity. With Frederick's coronation, the close and long-established cultural links between east and west would be symbolised in one person: the king of Bohemia and elector of the Palatinate. The Protestant and in many cases Calvinist nobility of Bohemia were enthusiastic in their support for Frederick. The illustrious humanist movement in Silesia, which included such names as Tobias Scultetus, Caspar Cunrad and Henel von Hennefeld B all supporters and patrons of Opitz and his colleagues B were also extremely hopeful of success. [23] With Frederick on the Bohemian throne, the pressure on Silesia from the Catholic Habsburgs would be relieved. The numerous poems, pamphlets and declarations of allegiance held in the unique civic and now university library of Wroclaw offer an insight into the otherwise unimaginable optimism of this generation. Opitz and Zincgref both wrote eulogies, one in the form of a speech, the other as a short narrative poem in Latin, describing the departing elector and soon-to-be king of Bohemia.

Yet despite all this euphoria, it is as the "Winter King" that Frederick will be remembered by posterity. After just one year, the dream had vanished, the Battle of White Mountain in November 1620 lost to the armies of Spain and Maximilian of Bavaria. The king was now forced to flee Prague. The city of Wroclaw, which had only just paid homage to the triumphant Frederick, now saw him leave as a refugee. His supporters were forced to go into hiding. In Prague, there were terrible reprisals against his followers, while Silesia came off relatively lightly. The dream of a national poetry movement, with freedom to develop in an Empire closely protected by a Protestant king, was over. The Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft began to falter and its work became much more difficult from then on. Many of the leaders of the Gesellschaft were directly involved in the events in Prague. The poets, on the other hand, now had to endure the full force of war sweeping through the Palatinate. But they were quick to mobilise. The final poem in the Opitz edition published by Zincgref in Strasbourg in 1624 was an immediate response to the events unfolding all around: This is an example of the new German poetry from the pen of its greatest exponent. Here, Opitz has combined the natural intonation of the sentences with their metrical structure, almost complying with his own rules of poetry. It is almost certain that Opitz would have continued working on this incendiary piece, had he dared include it in his first self-published collection which appeared in 1625. Along with his companions, Opitz was finally forced to flee Heidelberg. At one stroke, all political and cultural life on the banks of the Neckar was extinguished. While the elector sat in exile in the Hague, the richest and most exquisite library on German territory, the Palatina, was plundered and its treasures carried off via Munich to the Vatican in Rome. Opitz, however, had already started out on his path to fame, and criticism of Catholic supremacy could only be damaging. Nevertheless, this courageous little piece clearly illustrates that even "baroque poetry" was, in all its variety, more than just a period of literary apprenticeship for the German poets. As this work shows, poetry actually became directly involved in contemporary events, placing wit and insight in the service of the German cause, a cause which it served not only through its use of language, but also through its choice of subject matter.

The problem now was that the military developments under way could no longer be adequately dealt with in lyrical form. A more ambitious genre was required, such as that provided by drama, the novel or the epic. But how could German literature perform such a leap when it had only just made its first tentative steps in the lesser poetic forms? At this stage of development, it was hardly equipped to produce works of such scale, the only previous attempts of any significance having been in the form of translation, mainly by members of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft. Yet here too, the work produced under the pressure of contemporary events stands as a testament to the achievements of the German literary movement. The European humanist tradition is rich with poetry addressing the subject of war and the longing for peace, and the development of a dramatic tradition dealing with these themes was also rapid. [25] The work of Opitz's lieutenant in the north, Johann Rist, a clergyman of Wedel near Hamburg, was just as successful as that of the royal tutor, Johann Georg Schottel of Wolfenbüttel. The pastoral poem or bucolic, a genre which has been used in European literature as a literary vehicle for the lamentation of war and the yearning for peace since the days of Virgil, was developed in Germany by Opitz, Paul Fleming, Simon Dach and many others as a means of documenting the shocking events of their time. The long anticipated arrival of peace, signalling an end to the atrocities, was celebrated in Nuremberg in lyrical work of the highest artistic accomplishment and potency. [26]

Since the days of Homer, Virgil, Petrarch, Ronsard and Spenser, however, the most exalted literary genre for the commemoration of momentous historical events in the life of a nation has been the epic. Again, the German poets were equal to the task at hand. And again the man who stepped into the breach was Martin Opitz B at this time little over twenty years of age. But the work he was to produce under the influence of war B and with the events in France and the Netherlands clear in his mind B was so inflammatory and dangerous that he dared not publish. Written in 1620/21, the work did not see the light of day until 1633 when the Swedish king Gustavus II Adolphus came to the relief of the Protestant cause and offered them new hope. Thus begins one of Martin Opitz's finest works. Since the days of Homer, the great theme of the epic had been war. Virgil augmented this in his Aeneid with an outcome of peace and national unity. Germany, though, was a long way from either peace or unity as Opitz began to write. Therefore, making a virtue out of necessity, he blended the genre of the epic with that of the Lehrgedicht, or didactic poem, offering conclusive proof of his remarkable artistry in the process. Opitz was able to interpret events in a way which was thorough, thoughtful and instructive, and which managed to extract the secular and political implications as well as the spiritual and metaphysical significance. The moral of his works was inextricably linked to the example of real events, of which there was no longer any shortage in Germany at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. The song of war is, as Erasmus states again and again, timeless. Inextricably bound up in his subject, Opitz preserves its nameless misery for all time. Yet he was not content to describe only the incomprehensible suffering of war. Opitz seems unwilling to make room for the unspeakable, and yet it must be set down, the aggressor identified and his tyranny revealed. The poetry of humanism and the Enlightenment served a critical function, which Opitz also fulfilled in this work. Again, he reveals through the example of historical events what he considers to be the origin of the calamity. In the third and central volume, he cites the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's day in France and the heroic resistance of the Dutch: Charles V and Philip II ruled over an Empire in which the sun never set, but which the Dutch had been able to defy. This accomplishment cannot be attributed to courage alone; the Dutch had God on their side B a divine ally in a just war. The tyrant, on the other hand, is Spain, the political wing of the Counter-Reformation and a force of political repression. Yet worse than the loss of political liberty is the rape of faith, soul and conscience. Nothing, as Opitz observed along with all of European humanism, is equal to the sin of suppressing religious freedom. It is the most precious gift entrusted to man and may not be denied: Opitz, and thus the German poets, had now joined the pacifist poetry of the European humanist tradition, and it soon became clear what was behind this commentary on contemporary affairs. If man is to cease persecution of his neighbour, the things which unite must be remembered. To do good for its own sake and of one's own free will is the most noble quality of any religion. A similar view was formulated by Lessing and his contemporaries one and a half centuries later, as the torch of humanism passed into the Age of Enlightenment. They are sentiments which have remained valid to this day.

With his enduring articulation of the truth, Opitz served the German nation in its hour of need. This service was rendered in many ways, but two are worthy of particular note here. The example of the Dutch illustrated that, when founded on the belief that the cause is just, resistance is never in vain and must always be attempted. Through his verse, Opitz roused his compatriots in the great tradition of political poetry. The threat is identified; it approaches from the Catholic, or more particularly, Spanish camp. Thus the work joins with the Palatine and reformist press in general to help create a stronghold of national defence, and as such belongs to the history of the art and literature of resistance movements.

In his work, Opitz also seeks to extract the message B the historical lesson B from the events he describes. As with all great literature of the early modern era, the work is clothed in the mantle of religion and adorned with the notions of utopia and redemption. Opitz brings a conviction, a knowledge which transcends the mortal world and is destined to survive it. The concord of man within himself is nourished by the hope that his innermost, spiritual being will continue beyond the end of his days on earth. This being, the ideal of all who opposed the madness, will pass transformed into eternity: Such was the accomplishment of German poetry during its initial phase of development at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. It would receive opportunity enough to prove itself again in the course of the three decades ahead.




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FOOTNOTES

1. The main points of this study are developed in a series of easily comprehensible articles, which also include extensive suggestions for further reading. See Garber 1996 and Garber 1990. See the article on "epochs" (Epochen) which concludes the sequence on the early modern era (Frühneuzeit), Garber 1996a.

2. There is no recent study of literature in late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century Germany. See Füssel 1993; Müller 1984.

3. The most important research into the origins of German literature in this period is by Erich Trunz and Leonard Forster. Their study is summarised in Trunz 1995 and Forster 1977.

4. On these general points in the assessment of baroque literature, compare Garber 1991 et. al.

5. See Garber 1986.

6. Comprehensive study in Trunz 1992.

7. Kühlmann 1990.

8. Hock 1899, p. 31 (spelling modernised here and elsewhere).

9. Of the extensive literature published on this subject, the most useful is the splendid Peuckert 1973, which was the first work to open up this field. On spirituality in Silesia: see Schöffler 1956.

10. For the most recent study with full bibliography, see Seidel 1994.

11. The most comprehensive work on Opitz yet published, with bibliography on the literary and historical context: Garber 1984.

12. Opitz 1888, pp. 117 ff. (translation by Witkowski).

13. There is no comprehensive study of the Palatinate in the late humanist period. See Kühlmann/Wiegand 1989.

14. See the standard biography of Weckherlin in Forster 1944 as well as the works on Weckherlin compiled in Forster 1977.

15. Mertens 1974.

16. This collection appeared as an appendix to the Martin Opitz edition also published by Zincgref (compare note 24) and was reprinted as a separate edition: Zincgref 1879. All quotations used here are taken from this source. See the essay on Zincgref by Axel E. Walter in this catalogue.

17. Zincgref 1879, p. 20. See the reprint with textual criticism in Weckherlin 1968, I, pp. 24 ff. The poem is also included in Weckherlin's description of the baptism of prince Frederick of Württemberg. See Krapf/Wagenknecht 1977, p. 159.

18. Zincgref 1879, p. 62.

19. See the comprehensive study in Garber/Wismann 1996.

20. A proper study of this subject has yet to be published. The most recent summary, including a comprehensive bibliography, can be found in Garber 1990a.

21. See Conermann 1985 and Bircher/Conermann 1991 ff.

22. Garber 1986a.

23. See the final chapter in the magnificent epochal study in Gillet 1860. On the still inadequately researched political history of the late humanist period, compare Fleischer 1984.

24. Opitz 1902, p. 148. Also to be found in Opitz 1968 ff., II/1, pp. 216 ff. Here pp. 218-90 of the reprint of Zincgref's anthology (compare note 16).

25. See the contribution by Wilhelm Kühlmann in this volume.

26. See the contribution by Hartmut Laufhütte in this volume. See also Garber 1998. There is no study of European pastoral poetry from this perspective. See Garber 1982.

27. The only complete reprint can be found in the first volume of Opitz 1968 ff., pp. 187-266. Quotation from p. 192.

28. Opitz 1968 ff., I, p. 195.

29. Opitz 1968 ff., I, p. 195.

30. Opitz 1968 ff., I, p. 238.

31. Opitz 1968 ff., I, pp. 205 ff.

32. Opitz 1968 ff., I, p. 262.



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