The beginnings of German literature

Anyone who loves books will eventually want to know how the world of books is structured, and for thorough people, that means going back to the beginning.

When did German literature actually begin?

German literature, in the narrower sense of the currently used concept of literature (written art), began orally, long before the first humans could write and even longer before Gutenberg invented printing and thus enabled its dissemination among all citizens in our society.

We already know from the early Middle Ages about the creation and transmission of linguistic works of art: The knight wrote poetry and sang for his beloved, the victor of the battle wrote the description of his heroic deeds himself or had it written for him.

The entire historical record of the artistic use of language primarily concerned the aristocratic sphere, where heroic songs were retold, legends about important battles and their victors were invented, and courtly entertainment and love poetry were sometimes preserved through frequent recitation. Tales for the common people were also mostly dominated by these themes; in addition, valuable knowledge was passed on in proverbs and stories.

As mentioned, all of this initially occurred exclusively orally; in the early days of written records, only a select few could write, and they used Latin. The production of written documents was expensive, and when knowledge was recorded, it almost always meant translating it into Latin. This is how, for example, some Germanic tribal laws have been passed down to us.

This is not a record of artistic literature; the poetry of the early Middle Ages was hardly considered worth preserving by contemporaries, but rather interesting storytelling material for evening gatherings; therefore, most of the earliest poems of our cultural sphere are not available for posterity.

Only a few aristocrats, who were among the scholars of the time, had such a pronounced sense of beauty that they devoted some of their time to writing down their stories for posterity.

And some things were preserved through the work of the monks, who in the monasteries could devote themselves undisturbed to the composition of Latin writings and also had the task of producing works in the vernacular that helped in the interpretation of the Latin texts and were also intended to serve as missionary aids.

This is how the oldest literary works of our nation have been handed down to us: The Abrogans (a Latin-Old High German glossary written by a monk around 750) dates back to the 8th century, and the Merseburg Charms (around 750) and the Hildebrandslied (a heroic epic, beginning around 830) are also among the earliest examples of German literature. The latter are two fine examples of aristocratic historical tradition, which, in addition to heroic songs and praises of princes, has also preserved for us the first works of lyrical folk tradition with their love songs, laments, and charms.

The oldest (extant) book in German is considered to be the Abrogans; among the first books known to us are, besides those already mentioned, for example the Malberg Glosses in the Lex Salica (from 750), the Hammelburg and Würzburg Mark descriptions (777 and 779), the Wessobrunn Prayer (around 790), the Old High German Isidor (around 790) and the Weissenburg Catechism (end of the 8th century).

In the 9th century, a German-language monastic literature developed with evident literary self-confidence, mostly based on Latin epic poetry, and was immensely important for the development of the German language. Famous examples include the biblical epics, the Heliand (Old Saxon, written around 830 still in traditional alliterative verse) and the Liber Evangeliiorum (Book of Gospels) by Otfrid of Weissenburg, which towards the end of the 9th century was already written in the "modern" end rhyming verse.

Other important vernacular texts from this period include the “Kassel Conversations” (argumentation aids for priests, around 810), the “Old High German Tatian” (translation of Tatian’s Gospel Harmony, around 830), the Strasbourg Oaths (a treaty between rulers dated February 14, 842, in Old High German and Old French), the Petruslied (the oldest known German hymn, around 880), the Muspilli (alliterary poem about the end of the world, around 870), the martyr story “Georgslied” (around 880), and the Ludwigslied (a praise of a prince, around 881/882).

In the 10th century, German literature initially declined; essentially only a few verses, proverbs, and blessings were recorded. Only one monk upheld the honor of the local literature: Notker Labeo, a monk in St. Gallen, dared around the year 1000 to translate texts of the ancient philosophers into Old High German.

He achieved this at such a high level of quality that he is now celebrated as the first important German prose author.

This outlines the beginning of our literature, Old High German literature. It generally includes all written works that could be dated between the middle of the 8th century and the middle of the 11th century and are attributed to the High German language area; after that, one speaks of Early Middle High German literature.

This section initially focused on a brief presentation of the facts; the fact that it can be quite exciting to delve deeper into one of the aforementioned works will be discussed later.