Grimmelshausen, JOHANN JACOB CHRISTOF VON

Grimmelshausen, JOHANN JACOB CHRISTOF VON, a German novelist of the 17th century. There is some uncertainty as to the date and place of his birth, but in all probability he was born at Gelnhausen in Hesse-Cassel about the year 1625. In early boyhood he was carried off by a troop of soldiers, and became a soldier himself, serving on the imperial side in the Thirty Years' War up to its close. For several years after the end of the war he seems to have led a wandering life, but ultimately settled down at Reuchen, near Kehl, where he held the post of bailiff for the Bishop of Strasburg, and passed the remainder of his days in peace and prosperity, dying Amtmann of the town in 1676. In the leisure of his later life he produced a series of remarkable novels, all the more remarkable for appearing in the sterile period that succeeded the Thirty Years' War. His first attempt was an imitation of Cyrano de Bergerac, or perhaps of Godwin's Voyage of Domingo Gonsales to the Moon, but his best works are on the model of the Spanish picaro, or rogue and vagabond romances, and deal with the abundant materials furnished by his own life. The form was all that he borrowed; the rich humour, dramatic power, and local colour of his tales are all his own. The sufferings of the German peasantry at the hands of the lawless troopers who overrun the country have never been more powerfully pictured than in the opening chapters of Simplicissimus (first printed in 1669), which is evidently autobiographical to a great extent. It was followed in 1670 by Trutz Simplex, the story of an adventuress of the same sort as the Picara Justina of Andres Perez, and Springinsfeld, the history of a soldier of fortune, which was succeeded in 1672 by the Wonderful Bird's-nest, a fanciful production somewhat like Guevara's Diabolo Cojuelo. Besides these Grimmelshausen wrote the Erste Bärenheuter, the Galgenmännlein, Simpleissimus's Everlasting Calendar, and three or four other tales or tracts. His writings, especially Simpleissimus, seem to have been very popular in his own time, but to have fallen into neglect in the last century. Their merits, however, have been recognised of late years, and the best of them have been reprinted with introductions and notes—e.g. in the edition of Von Keller (4 vols. Stutt. 1854–62), that of Heinrich Kurz (4 vols. Leip. 1863), and of Julius Tittman (4 vols. Leip. 1874–77).