Biography Essay

Next to Johann Beer, Johann Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen was the greatest German novelist of the seventeenth century; today he is probably the most widely read and translated German baroque author. His picaresque novels Der Abentheurliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (1668; translated as The Adventurous Simplicissmus, 1912), Trutz Simplex: Oder Ausfuhrliche und wunderseltzame Lebensbesdireibung der Ertzbetrugerm und Landstortzerin Courasche (Spite Simplex; or, Detailed and Wondrous Life History of the Female Archfraud and Runagate Courasche, 1670; translated as "Courasche," 1964), and Der seltzame Springinsfeld (The Curious Tale of Springinsfeld, 1670) paint such a vivid picture of the Thirty Years' War that most people who have an image of this time acquired it by reading his novels. The instant popularity of Der Abentheurliche Simplicissimus Teutsch inspired Grimmelshausen to write several sequelsdie so-called Simplician writings—and the work has had a tremendous influence on twentieth-century German authors from Thomas Mann to Gunter Grass and beyond...