Simplicius Simplicissimus

Simplicissimus was also a satirical German weekly inspired by this novel.

Frontispiece of Grimmelshausen’s book Simplicius Simplicissimus.

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 and the first German novel masterpiece.

The full subtitle is "The life of an odd vagrant named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchsheim: 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."

Plot synopsis

The novel follows a boy from the Spessart named Simplicius in the Holy Roman Empire during the 30 Years War as he grows up in the depraved environment and joins the armies of both warring sides, switching allegiances several times. Born to an illiterate peasant family, he is separated from his home by foraging dragoons and is eventually adopted by a forest hermit. He is conscripted at a young age into service, and from there embarks on years of foraging, military triumph, wealth, prostitution, disease, travels to Russia, and countless other adventures.

Literary history

The novel is considered by some to contain autobiographic elements, inspired by Grimmelshausen's experience in the war.^[1] The historian Robert Ergang, however, 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."^[2] Subsequent research has shown that Grimmelshausen did indeed have direct knowledge of the war, that he was in fact the secretary of a military officer. The autobiographical element is certainly present. Ergang is relying on dated scholarly materials and he is in any case not a literary historian.

Opera adaptation

20th century composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann wrote the anti-war opera Simplicius Simplicissimus for chamber orchestra in the mid-1930s, 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. The chamber version (properly Der Simplicius Simplicissimus jugend) was revived by the Stuttgart State Opera in 2004.^[3]

Editions

English translations include:

• Simplicissimus, The German Adventurer, trans. John C. Osborne, Newfound Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0979729256
• The Simplicissimus Project, the 1912 trans. by A.T.S. Goodrick with additional material added by students at The College of William and Mary during Spring 2002.
• Simplicius Simplicissimus, trans. Monte Adair, 1986. Free download. ISBN 978-0819153494
• The Adventurous Simplicissimus, trans. Alfred Thomas Scrope Goodrick, London: William Heinemann, 1912. See also Project Gutenberg copy and later edition with new intro.

References

1. ^  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoffel von". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
2. ^ Robert Ergang, The Myth of the All-Destructive Fury of the Thirty Years’ War (Pocono Pines: The Craftsmen, 1956), 7.
3. ^ George Loomis, "The vision of 'Simplicius'", International Herald Tribune, May 19, 2004