German literature

This article provides a summarized overview of the major developments of German literature, that is to say, the novels, poetry, and plays written in the German language from the earliest stages (ca. 9^th century) until the present day. Although there are many different ways to organize such material, such as by genre or period, it is here more convenient to divide the article primarily according to period since genres and subgenres develop and change through time.

We include in this article the literature of all peoples and authors produced in recognized dialects of German at all stages of historical development. For modern literature this means including not only literature produced in the modern Federal Republic of Germany but also that written by authors from Austria and Switzerland. For older literature, this definition becomes more problematic as it is not always easy to correlate historic linguistic, historic, and ethnic divisions according to modern political divisions. For instance, the position of older Dutch literature before ca. AD 1100 as a separate literature is considerably arbitrary since the territory of what is now Belgium and the Netherlands was at that time fully incorporated into a political and linguistic German continuum. Nevertheless, since World War II Dutch medieval literature has been treated as a separate entity.