r we
are chiefly concerned with the latter sense of the word.

Germany had a rich popular literature during the Middle Ages from the
redaction of the _Nibelungenlied_ under Charles the Great onwards.
Prominent among this popular literature were the love-songs of the
Minnesingers, the epics drawn from mediaeval traditionary versions of
the legend of Troy, of the career of _Alexander the Great_, and, to
come to more recent times, to legends of _Charles the Great and his
Court_, of _Arthur and the Holy Grail_, the _Nibelungenlied_ in its
present form, and _Gudrun_. The "beast-epic," as it was called, was
also a favourite theme, especially in the form of _Reynard the Fox_.
In another branch of literature we have collections of laws dating
from the thirteenth century and known respectively from the country of
their origin as the _Sachsenspiegel_ and the _Schwabenspiegel_. Again,
at a later date, followed the productions of the Meistersingers, and
especially of Hans Sachs, of Nuernberg. Then, again, we have the prose
literature of the mystics, Eckhart, Tauler, and their followers.

Towards the close of the mediaeval period we find an immense number of
national ballads, of chap-books, not to mention the Passion Plays or
the polemical theological writings of the time leading up to the
Reformation. Luther's works, more especially his translation of the
Bible, powerfully helped to fix German as a literary language. The
Reformation period, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, was rich in
prose literature of every description--in fact, the output of serious
German writing continued unabated until well into the seventeenth
century. But the Thirty Years' War, which devastated Germany from end
to end, completely swept away the earlier literary culture of the
nation. In fact, the event in question forms a dividing line between
the earlier and the modern culture of Germany. In prose literature,
the latter half of the seventeenth century, Germany has only one work
to show, though that is indeed a remarkable one--namely,
Grimmelshausen's _Simplicissimus_, a romantic fiction under the guise
of an autobiography of wild and weird adventure for the most part
concerned with the Thirty Years' War.

The rebirth of German literature in its modern form began early in the
eighteenth century. Leibnitz wrote in Latin and French, and his
culture was mainly French. His follower, Christian Wolf, however,
first used the German language for philosoph