Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen invented a naïve, feckless hero with a guileless, lovable persona whose innocent wisdom exposes the world around him. He symbolize sanity in a depraved, degenerate Europe torn apart by the Thirty Years' War

Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen,
The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus, Trams. by  J. A. Underwood, Penguin Classics; Reprint ed, 2018. / Trans. by Mike Mitchell, Dedalus Limited, 2012. [1668.]
download it here (Gutenberg)


The first great German novel - an extraordinary recreation of the horrors of the Thirty Years War, written by a veteran of the conflict
First published in 1668, Simplicissimus tells the picaresque, brilliantly described adventures of a boy swept up in the Thirty Years War and the terrible things that he experiences. Some of it is realistic, some fantastical but the overall effect is an unmatched picture of Europe torn apart by an endless, sadistic, futile war from which nobody can escape. The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus was rediscovered in twentieth-century Germany where the book's grim message as a story of war in all of its horror and absurdity resonated and the book is now established as one of the essential works of German literature.




Mike Mitchell’s translation of Simplicissimus was shortlisted for the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize. “It is a violent and often all-too-realistic picaresque, set in war-torn Europe during the 17th-century Thirty Years War. Simplicissimus is the eternal innocent, the simple-minded survivor, and we follow him from a childhood in which he loses his parents to the casual atrocities of occupying troops, through his own soldiering adventures, and up to his final vocation as a hermit alone on an island. It is Rabelasian in some respects, but more down to earth and melancholy.” Phil Baker in The Sunday Times “It is the rarest kind of monument to life and literature, for it has survived almost three centuries and will survive many more. It is a story of the most basic kind of grandeur - gaudy, wild, raw, amusing, rollicking and ragged, boiling with life, on intimate terms with death and evil - but in the end, contrite and fully tired of a world wasting itself in blood, pillage and lust, but immortal in the miserable splendour of its sins.” Thomas Mann



"Grimmelshausen invented a naïve, feckless hero with a guileless, lovable persona whose innocent wisdom exposes the world around him. He symbolize sanity in a depraved, degenerate Europe torn apart by the Thirty Years' War." -- Jeremy Adler


Simplicius Simplicissimus is considered the first German adventure novel and published around 1669. It’s still assigned reading for German schoolchildren and considered an important text for anyone interested in Germany during the Thirty Years War.
Subtitled, “The life of an odd vagrant 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,” it was written by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, as an autobiography of his experiences during the Thirty Years War.
The story begins rather horrifically, with the attack on a farm by cavalry troopers. After witnessing the violence against his family and the destruction of their farm, the young protagonist is abducted by the soldiers and his journey begins. He spends time in the woods with a hermit, where he is first christened “Simplicissimus,” since he is so ignorant he is unaware of his own name, or of anything else for that matter.
Fortunately, the violence of the early chapters isn’t repeated, and the story becomes more a fantastical romp. The protagonist has many bizarre and frequently humorous adventures and his fortunes take him to the depths of misery and the heights of high society. He does time as a court fool, an outlaw, a military officer, a world traveler, a castaway, among others, and ends his story by becoming a hermit, almost exactly how he started.
For years, the book was considered a mostly accurate portrayal of Grimmelshausen’s life, though in recent years doubt has been cast on that. Scholars now think that he spent most of his life living quietly on the edges of the Black Forest and based the adventures of his novel on stories he heard from others and his own rather vivid imagination.
While much of the book does have a very gritty, realistic feel to it and period details are largely correct, there is too much of the fantastical for me to ever take it seriously as a memoir. Early in the story, some crazy parts of the tale could be written off as embellishment, but as soon as the protagonist asserted that he surprised a coven of witches in the living room of a house, whereupon they all mounted their brooms and flew out the window- which proved the existence of witches (what?) – I decided this was more or less a fairytale.
I was confirmed in this opinion near the end of the book when the protagonist spends an extended period of time living with mermen under a huge secret lake. Sorry, not buying that one either!
Though it was tedious at times, and the protagonist was usually just a jerk who richly deserved his misfortunes, I mostly enjoyed reading this. It was an interesting look at the time, and provided a glimpse into what could be considered the pop culture of late 17th century Germany. - Christina Ochs
https://christinaochs.com/2015/05/05/book-review-simplicius-simplicissimus/


A Companion to the Works of Grimmelshausen



Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, The Continuation of Simplicissimus, Dedalus Ltd., 2019.


The Continuation of Simplicissimus is the concluding chapter in one of the greatest and most acclaimed German novels. It has been described as a Catholic pilgrim's progress and is one of the great masterpieces of 17th-century European literature.


"Simplicissimus is the eternal innocent, the simple-minded survivor, and we follow him to his final vocation as a hermit alone on an island. It is Rabelasian in some respects, but more down to earth and melancholy." --Phil Baker


Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, Tearaway, Dedalus Ltd., 2003.


'The author', the ageing Simplicissimus and his former comrade Tearaway (a character from Simplicissimus) happen to meet in a village inn. First of all 'the author' describes how he was caught by Courage and her band of gypsies and conned into writing her life-story for her. In the main part of the novel, Tearaway then recounts his adventurous life, which takes him through the horrors of the Thirty Years' War and then to Hungary to fight against the Turks, later to Italy and Greece. He ends up as a one-legged fiddler, travelling round Germany, playing, begging, stealing and cheating. The narrative includes tales of trickery, sorcery and magic, some revolving round Tearaway's wife, who discovers a magic bird's nest which makes her invisible and which she uses it for various escapades, including cuckolding Tearaway, until she is caught and killed. Despite the fantastic elements of some episodes, the novel is told in the same down-to-earth, often earthy style of Grimmelshausen's other novels.





Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, Life of Courage: The Notorious Thief, Whore and Vagabond, Trans. by Mike Mitchell, Dedalus Limited, 2001. [1670.]




The Life of Courage (first published in 1670), one episode from whose life Brecht used as the basis for his Mother Courage, is the female counterpart to Simplicissimus. A young girl caught up in the turmoil of the Thirty Years War, she survives, even prospers, by the use of her native cunning and sexual attraction. Completely amoral, she flits from man to man, having a succession of husbands and lovers, and ends her life with a band of gypsies.
Courage supposedly tells her story to get her own back on Simplicissimus, who treats her rather dismissively in his memoirs. Her method is to reveal the truth about herself, including the fact that she was recovering from the pox at the time of their affair, so that he will be tarred with the same brush. The result is a lively account of lechery, knavery and trickery told with disarming frankness and a complete lack of remorse.


Courage is one of most indomitable women in European literature and a feminist icon for our times. The Life of Courage (first published in 1670), one episode from whose life Brecht used as the basis for his Mother Courage, is the female counterpart to Simplicissimus. A young girl caught up in the turmoil of the Thirty Years War, she survives, even prospers, by the use of her native cunning and sexual attraction. Completely amoral, she flits from man to man, having a succession of husbands and lovers, and ends her life with a band of gypsies. Courage supposedly tells her story to get her own back on Simplicissimus, who treats her rather dismissively in his memoirs. Her method is to reveal the truth about herself, including the fact that she was recovering from the pox at the time of their affair, so that he will be tarred with the same brush. The result is a lively account of lechery, knavery and trickery told with disarming frankness and a complete lack of remorse. It will appeal to anyone who likes a rollicking good yarn and a bit of knavery in their reading.


The first German best-seller was Simplicissimus (1668), the ostensible confessions of a rogue during the Thirty Years' War. Since the concept of royalties lay in the future, the anonymous author, since identified as Grimmelshausen, was highly motivated to produce sequels. In the first, a woman whom Simplicissimus had bedded and cheated tells her own ribald adventures to get back at him. Her exploits begin when at 13 and dressed as a boy, she becomes manservant to a young officer, whom she eventually marries on his deathbed so that she can claim his belongings. If that sounds rather conscienceless, it is just a foretaste of things to come. Courage--the name is her euphemism for the only manlike aggressive tool she lacks--can outfight, outwit, and outf--k any man, and she is beautiful. In English, her progeny includes Defoe's Moll Flanders and Roxana, Cleland's Fanny Hill, and Southern and Hoffenberg's Candy; in German, Brecht took her name and period for Mother Courage. In Mitchell's snappy translation, the first since 1912, she is one helluva woman. - Ray Olson




Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1621-1676) was born in the Wetterau town of Gelnhausen, an area devastated by the Thirty Years' War. Late in life, Grimmelshausen wrote Simplicius Simplicissimus, which became an immediate and overwhelming success, initiating the German novel tradition. It was widely imitated and existed in many versions and languages. Very little is known of Grimmelhausen's life and it is hard to know how much of his novel is based on his own experiences and how much on tales he had heard of the war.