German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy 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.
Philology is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist. In older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering comparative and historical linguistics.
Karl Wilhelm FriedrichSchlegel was a German poet, literary critic, philosopher, philologist, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figures of Jena Romanticism.
August Böckh or Boeckh was a German classical scholar and antiquarian.
Johann Georg Hamann was a German Lutheran philosopher from Königsberg known as "the Wizard of the North" who was one of the leading figures of post-Kantian philosophy. His work was used by his student J. G. Herder as the main support of the Sturm und Drang movement, and is associated with the Counter-Enlightenment and Romanticism.
German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, German history, and German politics in addition to the language and literature component. Common German names for the field are Germanistik, Deutsche Philologie, and Deutsche Sprachwissenschaft und Literaturwissenschaft. In English, the terms Germanistics or Germanics are sometimes used, but the subject is more often referred to as German studies, German language and literature, or German philology.
Ernst Robert Curtius was a German literary scholar, philologist, and Romance languages literary critic, best known for his 1948 study Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter, translated in English as European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages.
Weimar Classicism was a German literary and cultural movement, whose practitioners established a new humanism from the synthesis of ideas from Romanticism, Classicism, and the Age of Enlightenment. It was named after the city of Weimar, Germany, because the leading authors of Weimar Classicism lived there.
David E. Wellbery is an American professor of German Studies at the University of Chicago. As of 2022 he is the chair of the department of Germanic Studies and holds the LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professorship in the department. In 2020 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Joachim Latacz is a German classical philologist.
Christian Tobias Damm was a renowned German Classical philologist, and the less than orthodox theologian who was rector (1730) and prorector (1742) of the Köllnische Gymnasium, the oldest in Berlin, but prematurely pensioned off in 1766, in the wake of scandalized accusations of trends towards Socianian doctrines in some of his work, to his lasting bitterness.
Fausto Cercignani is an Italian scholar, essayist and poet.
Mark. H. Gelber is an American-Israeli scholar of comparative literature and German-Jewish literature and culture. He received his B.A. magna cum laude and with high honors in Letters and German. He also studied at the University of Bonn, the University of Grenoble, and Tel Aviv University. He was accepted for graduate studies as a Lewis Farmington Fellow in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Yale University and he received his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University. In 1980 he accepted an appointment as post-doctoral lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, in the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics. Except for guest professorships and research fellowships abroad, he has been affiliated there since that time. His research topics include: German-Jewish literature and culture, the literature of exile, cultural Zionism, early Zionist literature and journalism, literary anti-Semitism, autobiography and biography, and literary reception. He lectures frequently at international meetings and conferences in Israel, Europe, China, and the United States. He is presently professor emeritus with active researcher status.
Michael von Albrecht is a German classical scholar and translator, as well as a poet writing in Latin.
Christian Gottfried Schütz was a German classical scholar and humanist, known for his contributions in philosophy and philology, and for his work as an academic and literary editor and publisher.
Richard Paul Wülker, until 1884 surname spelled as Wülcker was a German Anglist.
Walther Rehm was a German literary scholar.
Peter Uwe Hohendahl is a literary and intellectual historian and theorist. He served as the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of German Studies at Cornell University, where he is now a professor emeritus.
Rüdiger Campe is a German literary scholar of modern German literature whose research focuses on rhetoric, aesthetics, history of science, and literary history and theory. He is currently the Alfred C. and Martha F. Mohr Professor of German and Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University. He is a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award and the Aby Warburg Prize.
Rainer Nägele was an American literary scholar whose research primarily focused on modern German and comparative liteture. He was the author of several books, including Reading after Freud: Essays on Goethe, Hölderlin, Habermas, Nietzsche, Brecht, Celan, and Freud. Nägele was the Alfred C. & Martha F. Mohr Professor Emeritus of German Language and Literature at Yale University.
