page_title: Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen / Works
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Frontispiz von Grimmelshausens Roman Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus English: Frontispiece [not cover page!] of Grimmelshausen’s book SimplicissimusTitle&#32;top&#58; &#32;Abenteuerlicher Simplicissimus&#32;&#91;Adventurous Simplicissimus&#93;Caption&#32;bottom&#58; &#32;Ich ward gleich wie Phoenix durchs Feuer geboren / Ich flog durch die Lüffte? ward doch nicht verloren / Ich wandert im waßer ich streiffte zu Land, in solchem Umschwermen macht ich mir bekant / was oft mich betrübet und selten ergetzet, was war das? Ich habs in dies Buch hier gesetzet / Damit sich der Leser gleich wie ich itzt thu, entferne der Torheit, und Lebe in Ruh.&#32;&#91;Like Phoenix I was born from fire / I flew though the airs? yet was not lost / I wandered in water I roamed over land, in such swarming around I made myself known / what oftentimes grieved me and rarely amused / what was that? I put it in this book here / So that the reader, like I'm doing now, may retire from folly and live in peace.&#93;
context_page_description: Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen was a German author. He is best known for his 1669 picaresque novel Simplicius Simplicissimus and the accompanying Simplician Scriptures series.
context_section_description: Grimmelshausen's work is greatly influenced by previous utopian and travel literature, and the Simplicissimus series attained a readership larger than any other seventeenth-century novel. Formerly, he was credited with Der fliegende Wandersmann nach dem Mond, a translation from Jean Baudoin's L'Homme dans la Lune, itself a translation of Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone, but recent scholars have disputed this; he did, however, write an appendix to a 1667 edition of that translation, the basis for that association. Der fliegende Wandersman was included in his collected works, though without the appendix.
  In 1668, Grimmelshausen published Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus, which has been called 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 has been interpreted as its author's autobiography; he begins with the childhood of his hero, and describes the latter's adventures amid the stirring scenes of the Thirty Years' War. The rustic detail with which these pictures are presented makes the book a valuable document of its time. For some, however, the later parts of the book overindulge in allegory, and finally become a Robinson Crusoe story.
  The historian Robert Ergang draws upon Gustav Könnecke's Quellen und Forschungen zur Lebensgeschichte Grimmelshausens to assert 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 Grimmelshausen's other works, are the so-called Simplicianische Schriften (German: Simplizianische Schriften):
  Die Ertzbetrügerin and Landstörtzerin Courasche (1670)
  Der seltsame Springinsfeld (1670)
  Das wunderbarliche Vogelnest (1672)
  He also published satires, such as Der teutsche Michel (1673), and gallant novels, like Dietwald und Amelinde (1670).
caption: Abenteuerlicher Simplicissimus, frontispiece of an early edition
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