Among the Minnesingers of greatest note are Walther von der Vogelweide, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and later, when their head-quarters were at Nueremberg, Hans Sachs.  Their favorite themes were court epics, dealing especially with the legends of Arthur, of the Holy Grail, and of Charles the Great.  Many of these epics are embodied in the Heldenbuch, or Book of Heroes, compiled in the fifteenth century by Kaspar von der Rhoen, while the Abenteuerbuch contains many of these legends as well as Der Rosengarten and Koenig Laurin.

In the second part of the thirteenth century artificiality and vulgarity began to preponderate, provoking as counterweights didactic works such as Der Krieg auf der Wartburg.  The fourteenth century saw the rise of the free cities, literary guilds, and five universities.  It also marks the cultivation of political satire in such works as Reinecke Fuchs, and of narrative prose chronicles like the Lueneburger, Alsatian, and Thuringian Chronicles, which are sometimes termed prose epics.  The Volksbuecher also date from this time, and have preserved for us many tales which would otherwise have been lost, such as the legends of the Wandering Jew and Dr. Faustus.

The age of Reformation proved too serious for poets to indulge in any epics save new versions of Reinecke Fuchs and Der Froschmeuseler, and after the Thirty Years’ War the first poem of this class really worthy of mention is Klopstock’s Messias, or epic in twenty books on the life and mission of Christ and the fulfilment of the task for which he was foreordained.

Contemporary with Klopstock are many noted writers, who distinguished themselves in what is known as the classic period of German literature.  This begins with Goethe’s return from Italy, when he, with Schiller’s aid, formed a classical school of literature in Germany.

While Schiller has given us the immortal epic drama “William Tell,” Goethe produced the idyllic epic “Hermann und Dorothea,” the dramatical epic “Faust,” and an inimitable version of the animal epic “Reinecke Fuchs.”

Wieland also was a prolific writer in many fields; inspired by the Arabian Nights, Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Huon de Bordeaux, [27] he composed an allegorical epic entitled “Oberon,” wherein “picture after picture is unfolded to his readers,” and which has since served as a theme for musicians and painters.

Since Goethe’s day Wagner has made the greatest and most picturesque use of the old German epic material, for the themes of nearly all his operas are drawn from this source.[28]

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 24:  See the author’s “Legends of the Rhine.”]

[Footnote 25:  See the author’s “Legends of the Middle Ages.”]

[Footnote 26:  Detailed accounts of “Gudrun” and several other of these subordinate epics can be found in the author’s “Legends of the Middle Ages.”]