German literature
German authors
- Angelus Silesius
- Heinrich Böll
- Bertolt Brecht
- Karl Georg Büchner
- Hans Magnus Enzensberger
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Günter Grass
- Brothers Grimm
- Hans von Grimmelshausen
- Peter Handke
- Gerhart Hauptmann
- Heinrich Heine
- Heinrich der Glïchezäre
- Johann Gottfried von Herder
- Hermann Hesse
- Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
- Friedrich Hölderlin
- Uwe Johnson
- Siegfried Lenz
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
- Thomas Mann
- Robert Musil
- Novalis
- Jean Paul Richter
- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling
- Friedrich von Schiller
- Arthur Schnitzler
- Georg Trakl
- Frank Wedekind
- Christa Wolf
Angelus Silesius (Johann Scheffler), 1624-1677
This mystic poet, son of a noble Lutheran Pole, was born in Breslau, in the Silesia region (Central Europe), the place his more famous name is derived from. His poetic work is marked by the influence having read Jakib Böhme, Paracelso, Franckenberg, Weigel and Johannes Tauler.
He joined the orders of St Francis in 1661 after having forsworn Lutheranism in 1653. After six years of practicing as a physician in the Court of Emperor Ferdinand III of Habsburg, in Vienna, he returned to Breslau, where he was ordained a priest.
The first edition of The Cherubic Wanderer (Cherubinischer Wandersmann, 1674) came out in 1657 under the title Geistreiche Sinn und Schlussreime (Epigrammatic verses on spiritual life ). The authors work is included in a series of six books that make up one of the master pieces of spiritual European literature.