CHAPTER IX GERMAN LITERATURE The consideration of German history and literature discloses a record of progress, genius, and achievement, leading up to the organization of one of the chief states of Europe, a powerful and unified, though somewhat arrogant, empire. In due course came August, 1914, an epochal date in Germany as elsewhere, ushering in profound changes in government, in the life of the people, and in currents of thought. However, our present chapter has to do not with the events of the years of war nor with conjectures as to the future, but with the more significant currents of German life and letters of the past. The German race and language. Long before the Christian Era the Germanic tribes, a branch of the Indo-Europeans, settled in the north-central portion of Europe. Their kinsfolk, the Celts, went farther west, while the Slavs settled to the east. The oldest form of the Gothic tongue, common to all the Germanic peoples, still exists in a most interesting document, Bishop Ulfilas' translation of the Bible, made in the fourth century and preserved in part to our own day. Even earlier than that, however, there were various dialects in current use. To the north the Scandinavian language was being formed. High German, spoken in the highlands of southern Germany, had two main elements, Frankish and Swabian; while Low German, the speech of the lower lands more to the north and west, was the basis of Anglo-Saxon, Frisian, Flemish, and Dutch. We cannot enter into these matters very elaborately, but it is important to remember that the German language is related to the languages of these other peoples, and that High German itself had several periods: the Old, Saxon in type, flourishing until 1050 or 1100, the time of the Crusades; the Middle, existing from that time until the Reformation; and the Modern, the literary and ordinary speech of Germany, continuing until our day, a union of the current dialects of Luther's time—a vigorous language which Luther himself was largely instrumental in fixing permanently. "I have not," wrote Luther, "a distinct, particular, and peculiar kind of language, but I use the common German language in order that the inhabitants of both the upper and the lower counties may understand me." German is the speech of Germany, of Luxemburg, of Austria, and of the larger part of Switzerland. It is spoken by about eighty million people. Like English it has taken over many Latin and French words. It has retained-as the English language, generally speaking, has not-its early unaccented word endings, which give it on the whole a greater freedom in its poetry. German prose has never been, however, as flexible a mode of expression as English. Long, polysyllabic words and involved sentences are common. It was Mark Twain, we believe, who complained that Schiller wrote his "History of the Thirty Years' War" between the two parts of a German verb! The histories of Niebuhr and Mommsen, the philosophical writings of Kant and Hegel, and the criticism of Lessing and Herder are all, in general, less attractive as literature than similar French and English works. The German people have excelled, however, in their folklore and fairy stories, or märchen. Certain German traits seem to be characteristic. The German has a strongly sentimental and romantic vein; he is a lover of nature and of music. When the Roman Tacitus described the early Germanic tribes, he told of their battle songs and hymns, which were sung in chorus. All through their history the lyric impulse has been strong, as witnessed by songs, patriotic and love poems, nature lyrics, and hymns. The German is also keenly intellectual and has a veritable passion for philosophical thought. In his mental processes he is apt to be deliberative and methodical, with a tendency to go to the bottom of things and to say the last word. Though not ordinarily original, he is a patient investigator. German learning explores all fields,—art, criticism, history, philosophy, science, religion, generally without brilliance, but always with thoroughness. Of English interpreters of German literature Coleridge and Carlyle were among the earliest and most influential. We must think of the Germanic tribes as hardy, resourceful, warlike, and independent, and as extending from the land of the Vikings at the north to the northern limits of the Roman Empire at the south. The central European peoples shared the religious and mythological ideas of their northern kinsfolk. Christianity was generally accepted, however, in Germany before Charlemagne's time, and the Northern gods were abandoned. It was not so easy, on the other hand, to relinquish a belief in primitive superstitions and magic, in elves, wood sprites, and dwarfs. The German has always felt at home in this strange world, and in our own day sees nothing especially incongruous, for example, in the material of such a play as Hauptmann's "The Sunken Bell." The earliest literature was not written literature and has therefore not been preserved. It apparently dealt with mythological themes and with heroic stories, the heritage of centuries of conflict. Back of the rude alliterative poems which were handed down orally from generation to generation were legendary tales and also a certain amount of authentic history. The latter had mainly to do with the migrations of Germanic tribes, with the Burgundian kingdom on the Rhine near Worms, with King Attila and his terrible horde of Huns who swept across Europe in the middle of the fifth century, and with Theodoric the Ostrogoth and his victory over Odoacer in 489 at Verona. After the lapse of centuries exact chronology was forgotten, the heroes were all grouped in one generation, Attila became Etzel, Gundahari the Burgundian became King Gunther, and Theodoric of Verona became Dietrich of Bern. This brings us to the earliest undoubted works of literature in German. The "Hildebrandslied." A sixty-nine line fragment written at the end of the eighth century but having to do with a period about two hundred years earlier, the "Hildebrandslied” (or the "Lay of Hildebrand"), is an interesting example of the once numerous popular epics of Germany. Hildebrand, master-at-arms of Dietrich, returning from years of sojourn among the Huns, meets in single combat the champion of an opposing host, who unexpectedly proves to be his own son. "O mighty God,' cries Hildebrand, 'a drear fate happens. Sixty summers and winters, ever placed by men among the spearmen, I have so borne myself that bane got I never. Now shall my own child smite me with the sword, or I be his death ?"" The "Hildebrandslied" is human in spirit, strictly alliterative in form, and written in a mixture of High and Low German dialect. 2 The "Nibelungenlied." Much more important is the noble and complete epic poem written in Middle High German in the early thirteenth century by an unknown poet gifted with imagination and power. The "Nibelungenlied" is a composite German version of the heroic tales that are to be found also in the Icelandic Eddas and in the Norse "Volsunga Saga." The poem contains about ten thousand lines in four-line stanzas and is divided into thirty-nine adventures. An idea of the strength and ruggedness of the original and of its metrical form may be gained from the first two stanzas, here given with Carlyle's very exact translation: "Uns ist in alten maeren Wunders vil geseit, Von helden lobebaeren Von grozer chuonheit; Von vrouden und hoch-geziten, Von weinen und von chlagen, "Es wühs in Burgonden Ein vil edel magedin, Das in allen landen Niht schoners mohte sin: Chriemhilt was si geheien, Si wart ein schone wip; "We find in ancient story Of heroes in great glory Wonders many told, Of joyances and high-tides, Of weeping and of woe, "A right noble maiden Did grow in Burgundy, The scene is laid among Kriemhild's Burgundian kinsmen on the Iceland, where Siegfried went to aid King Gunther, the brother of Kriemhild, in gaining the warrior princess Brunhild as his wife; and in Hungary, the home of Kriemhild after Siegfried's death. It is a story of the elemental passions of jealousy, hatred, and revenge, leading to the extinction of the powerful Burgundians. Purely pagan in its point of view, it shows no trace of Christianity beyond a few formal observances. Over the tale brood fatalism and woe, almost from the first words. Yet the glimpse which we have of Siegfried-courageous, handsome, good-natured, of divine lineage, the slayer of the dragon, the possessor of the sinister hoard, or treasure, of the Nibelungs-is singularly engaging. Kriemhild herself, undeniably the central figure, is the worthy choice of a hero. Her loyal affection for Siegfried and her tragic fortunes alike blind us to the unlovely traits in her character. Brunhild is less a Valkyrie and less a prime mover of events than in the Norse version of the story. Hagen, the vassal of King Gunther and the slayer of Siegfried, grows in strength as the tale advances, and at the close Kriemhild and he stand over against each other, deadly enemies, alike doomed to destruction-two striking epic figures. The poem contains unforgetable scenes: Siegfried's first meeting with Kriemhild; the trial of skill between Gunther, assisted by Siegfried, and the almost superhuman Brunhild; the quarrel of the two proud queens before the minster at Worms; the stealthy doing to death of Siegfried; and the last, greatest scene of all, in which Etzel and Dietrich are reluctantly drawn into the struggle and assist in the overthrow of the Burgundians and the final vengeance of Kriemhild. The reader will not, however, be content with this piecemeal account. There are several spirited verse and prose translations. Carlyle's essay on the "Nibelungenlied" brings back the atmosphere of the old poem in a marvelous way and is shot through with the genius and poetic appreciation of Carlyle himself. -Other heroic material. There is other interesting medieval epic material to be found in the "Heldenbuch," or "Book of the Heroes," a collection made at the command of Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519). One of the poems included is the fragment of the "Hildebrandslied," already mentioned; another is an epic of over |