German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language.
This includes literature written in Germany itself as well as German-language Swiss and Austrian literature, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora.
German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects (e.g. Alemannic).
An early flowering of Ger...
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German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language.
This includes literature written in Germany itself as well as German-language Swiss and Austrian literature, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora.
German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects (e.g. Alemannic).
An early flowering of German literature is the Middle High German period of the High Middle Ages. Modern literature in German begins with the authors of the Enlightenment (such as Herder) and reaches its "classical" form at the turn of the 18th century with Weimar Classicism (Goethe and Schiller).
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...
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