Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen

Hans Jakob Christoffel Von Grimmelshausen

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Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen

Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1621 – August 17, 1676) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
author.

Grimmelshausen was born at Gelnhausen

Gelnhausen

File:Gelnhausen - Obermarkt.jpgGelnhausen is a town and the capital of the Main-Kinzig-Kreis, in Hesse, Germany. It is located approx. 40 kilometers east of Frankfurt am Main, between the Vogelsberg mountains and the Spessart range at the river Kinzig ....
. At the age of ten he was kidnapped by Hessian

Hesse

Hesse is a States of Germany of Germany with an area of 21,110 km? and just over six million inhabitants. The state capital is Wiesbaden. Hesse's largest city is nearby Frankfurt am Main....
soldiery, and in their midst tasted the adventures of military life in the Thirty Years' War

Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years' War was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. The war was fought primarily in Germany and at various points involved most of the countries of Europe....
.

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Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1621 – August 17, 1676) was a German

Germany

Gelnhausen

Hesse

Thirty Years' War

Bishop

A bishop is an ordination or consecration member of the Clergy#Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight....
in Straßburg and in 1665 was made Schultheiss (magistrate) at Renchen

Renchen

Renchen is a small city in Baden-W?rttemberg, Germany, part of the Ortenaukreis....
in Baden.

On obtaining this appointment, he devoted himself to literary pursuits, and in 1668 published Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus
Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus

Simplicius Simplicissimus is a picaresque novel of the Baroque style, written in 1668 by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen and published the subsequent year....
Teutsch, d.h. die Beschreibung des Lebens eines seltsamen Vaganten, genannt Melchior Sternfels von Fuchsheim, the greatest German novel of the 17th century. For this work he took as his model the picaresque romances of Spain, already to some extent known in Germany. Simplicissimus is in great measure its author's autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a biography written by its subject . The term was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English language Periodical publication Quarterly Review, but the form goes back to antiquity....
; he begins with the childhood of his hero, and describes the latter's adventures amid the stirring scenes of the Thirty Years' War

Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years' War was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. The war was fought primarily in Germany and at various points involved most of the countries of Europe....
. The rustic detail with which these pictures are presented makes the book one of the most valuable documents of its time. In the later parts Grimmelshausen, however, over-indulges in allegory, and finally loses himself in a Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe. It was first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English. The book is a fictional autobiography of the title character, an English castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela, encountering Indigenous peoples of the Americas, captives, and mu...
story.

The historian Robert Ergang, however, draws upon Gustav Könnecke's Quellen und Forschungen zur Lebensgeschichte Grimmelshausens to convey the assertion that "the events related in the novel Simplicissimus could hardly have been autobiographical since [Grimmelshausen] lived a peaceful existence in quiet towns and villages on the fringe of the Black Forest and that the material he incorporated in his work was not taken from actual experience, but was either borrowed from the past, collected from hearsay, or created by a vivid imagination."

Among his other works, the most important are the so-called Simplicianische Schriften:

Die Ertzbetrügerin and Landstörtzerin Courasche (1669)
Der seltsame Springinsfeld (1670)
Das wunderbarliche Vogelnest (1672)

His satires, such as Der teutsche Michel (1670), and gallant novels, like Dietwald und Amelinde (1670) are of inferior interest. He died at Renchen on August 17, 1676, where a monument was erected to him in 1779.

Grimmelshausen's "Landstörtzerin Courasche" became an important inspiration for Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

was a Germany poet, playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of the Twentieth-century theatre, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and Theatre, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble?the post-war theatre company operated by Brec...
´s play "Mutter Courage".

Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen

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