This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Simplicius Simplicissimus is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
- Simplicissimus was also a satirical German weekly inspired by this novel.
Simplicius Simplicissimus (German: Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch) is a picaresque novel of the Baroque style, written in 1668 by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen and published the subsequent year. Inspired by the events and horrors of the Thirty Years' War which had devastated Germany from 1618 to 1648, it is regarded as the first adventure novel in the German language. It contains autobiographic elements, inspired by Grimmelshausen's experience in the war.citation needed 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."1
Contents |
Opera adaptation
Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-1963) wrote the anti-war opera Simplicius Simplicissimus for chamber orchestra in the mid-1930's, with contributions to the libretto by his teacher Hermann Scherchen. It opens:
- In A.D. 1618, 12 million lived in Germany. Then came the great war. … In A.D. 1648 only 4 million still lived in Germany.
It was first performed in 1948; Hartmann scored it for full orchestra in 1956. It was revived by the Stuttgart State Opera in 2004.2
Titles in English
It has been translated into English under a variety of titles:3
- Simplicissimus
- Simplicissimus the Vagabond
- Simplicius Simplicissimus
- The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus
- The Adventures of a Simpleton
- The Adventurous Simplicissimus
The full subtitle is "The life of a strange adventurer named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim: namely where and in what manner he came into this world, what he saw, learned, experienced, and endured therein ; also why he again left it of his own free will."
Satirical Weekly
Simplicissimus, derived from the above, was a satirical German weekly magazine started by Albert Langen in April 1896 and published through 1944.
Notes
- ^ Robert Ergang, The Myth of the All-Destructive Fury of the Thirty Years’ War (Pocono Pines: The Craftsmen, 1956), 7.
- ^ George Loomis, "The vision of 'Simplicius'", International Herald Tribune, May 19, 2004
- ^ Harvard College Library catalogue[1]
External links
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 28 August 2008, at 22:51.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Simplicius Simplicissimus".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.