But let us consider what bearing all this had on German poetry.  In this field the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were desperately dreary.  In the former century the leading thinkers of Germany were absorbed in theological controversy, while in the next the Thirty Years’ War completely crushed the spirit of the nation.  There is little poetry in this period that calls for even passing notice in this investigation.  Paul Fleming, although he was with Olearius in Persia, has written nothing that would interest us here.  Andreas Gryphius took the subject for his drama “Catharina von Georgien” (1657) from Persian history.  It is the story of the cruel execution of the Georgian queen by order of Shah ’Abbas in 1624.[61] Nor is Oriental influence in the eighteenth century more noticeable.  Occasionally an Oriental touch is brought in.  Pfeffel makes his “Bramine” read a lesson to bigots; Matthias Claudius in his well-known poem makes Herr Urian pay a visit to the Great Mogul; Buerger, in his salacious story of the queen of Golkonde, transports the lovers to India; Lessing, in “Minna von Barnhelm” (Act i.  Sc. 12) represents Werner as intending to take service with Prince Heraklius of Persia, and he chooses an Oriental setting for his “Nathan der Weise.”

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In the prose writings of this period Oriental influence is much more discernible.  In the literature dealing with magic Zoroaster always played a prominent part.  The invention of the Cabala was commonly ascribed to him.[62] European writers on the black art, as for instance Bodinus, whose De Magorum Daemonomania was translated by Fischart (Strassburg, 1591), repeat about Zoroaster all the fables found in classical or patristic writers.  So the Iranian sage figures prominently also in the Faust-legend.  He is the prince of magicians whose book Faust studies so diligently that he is called a second Zoroastris.[63] This book passes into the hands of Faust’s pupil Christoph Wagner, who uses it as diligently as his master.[64]

In all this folkbook-literature India is a mere name.  Thus in the oldest Faust-book of 1587 the sorcerer makes a journey in the air through England, Spain, France, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, India, Africa and Persia, and finally comes to Morenland.[65]

Of all the prose-writings, however, the novel, which began to flourish luxuriously in the seventeenth century, showed the most marked tendency to make use of Eastern scenery and episodes, and incidentally to exhibit the author’s erudition on everything Oriental.  Thus Grimmelshausen transports his hero Simplicissimus into Asia through the device of Tartar captivity.  Lohenstein, in his ultra-Teutonic romance of Arminius, manages to introduce an Armenian princess and a prince from Pontus.  The latter, as we learn from the autobiography with which he favors us in the fifth book, has been in India.  He took with him a Brahman sage, who burned himself on reaching Greece.