German literature (German: Deutschsprachige Literatur) is the texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and also books written by the German diaspora.

Periods

• Medieval German literature
  • Old High German literature (750–1050)
  • Middle High German literature (1050–1350)
  • Late medieval / Renaissance (1350–1500)
• Early Modern German literature (see Early Modern literature)
  • Humanism and Protestant Reformation (1500–1650)
  • Baroque (1600–1720)
  • Enlightenment (1680–1789)
• Modern German literature
  • 18th- and 19th-century German literature
    • Empfindsamkeit / Sensibility (1750s–1770s)
    • Sturm und Drang / Storm and Stress (1760s–1780s)
    • German Classicism (1729–1832)
      • Weimar Classicism (1788–1805) or (1788–1832), depending on Schiller's (1805) or Goethe's (1832) death
    • German Romanticism (1790s–1880s)
    • Biedermeier (1815–1848)
    • Young Germany (1830–1850)
    • Poetic Realism (1848–1890)
    • Naturalism (1880–1900)
  • 20th-century German literature
    • 1900–1933
      • Fin de siècle (c. 1900)
      • Symbolism
      • Expressionism (1910–1920)
      • Dada (1914–1924)
      • New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit)
    • Well Known Writers of the 20th Century
    • 1933–1945
      • National Socialist literature
      • Exile literature
    • 1945–1989
      • By country
        • Federal Republic of Germany
        • German Democratic Republic
        • Austria
        • Switzerland
        • Other
      • By thematic or group
        • Post-war literature (1945–1967)
        • Group 47
        • Holocaust literature
  • Contemporary German literature (1989–)

Writings on the subject

• Cambridge History of German Literature. Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen, ed. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• Konzett, Matthias Piccolruaz. Encyclopedia of German Literature. Routledge, 2000.
• The Oxford Companion to German Literature, ed. by Mary Garland and Henry Garland, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 1997
• Grange, William, ed. Historical dictionary of German literature to 1945 (2011) online
• Van Cleve, John W. (1986). The Merchant in German Literature of the Enlightenment. Chapel Hill.
• Van Cleve, John W. (1991). The Problem of Wealth in the Literature of Luther's Germany. Camden House.