German literature

Encyclopedia : G : GE : GER : German literature

German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language.

Periodization is not an exact science, but the following list contains movements or time periods typically used in discussing German literature. It seems worth noting that the periods of medieval German literature span two or three centuries, those of early modern German literature span one century, and those of modern German literature each span one or two decades. The closer one nears the present, the more debated the periodizations become.

Medieval German literature
* Old High German literature (750-1050)
* Middle High German literature (1050-1300)
* Late medieval German literature/Renaissance (1300-1500)
Early Modern German literature (see Early modern Europe)
* Humanism and Protestant Reformation (1500-1650)
* Baroque (1600-1720)
* Enlightenment (1680-1789)
Modern German literature
* Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century German literature
** Empfindsamkeit / Sensibility (1750s-1770s)
** Sturm und Drang / Storm and Stress (1760s-1780s)
** German Classicism (1729–1832)
*** Weimar Classicism (1788-1805) or (1788-1832), depending on whether one marks the end of this period with Schiller's death (1805) or with Goethe's (1832)
** German Romanticism (1790s-1880s)
** Biedermeier (1815-1848)
** Young Germany (1830-1850)
** Poetic Realism (1848-1890)
** Naturalism (1880-1900)
* Twentieth-century German literature
** 1900-1933
*** Fin de siècle (ca. 1900)
*** Symbolism
*** Expressionism (1910-1920)
*** Dada (1914-1924)
*** New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit)
** 1933-1945
*** National Socialist literature
*** Exile literature
** 1945-1989
*** By country
**** Federal Republik of Germany
**** German Democratic Republic
**** Austria
**** Switzerland
**** Other
*** By thematic or group
**** Group 47
**** Holocaust literature
* Contemporary German literature (1989-)

For well-known authors who wrote or write literature in the German language see list of German-language authors and list of German-language poets. See also list of German-language philosophers.

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