Multiple periods  /  Medieval literature      Renaissance, reformation   / 18th and 19th century   / 20th century
See also Biography, Online journals

Electronic collections of German literature

Search the Yale database list for German literature databases

Multiple periods

Die Deutsche Lyrik - An unparalleled publication of German poetry online, commencing with work from the 15th century and following the development of German poetry up to the beginning of the 20th century.

German literature on the internet: Text collections and author index (WESS) - German language text collections on the Internet; most, but not all, are freely accessible.

Sophie: A digital library of early German women's writing (BYU) - A growing digital library of fiction written by German women between 1740 and 1923.

Athena: Swiss authors and texts online - Links to electronic editions of texts by Swiss authors, from the Middle Ages to the present, by Pierre Perroud, University of Geneva.

Medieval literature

Handschriftenabbildungen Deutschsprachige Handschriften des Mittelalters im Internet - Links to medieval manuscripts online.

Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (Codex Manesse) - (1300-1340) The largest collection of Middle High German song texts and sayings, containing almost 6,000 stanzas by 140 poets. The Heidelberg University Library has published the entire collection online, and has compiled a searchable index of the manuscripts.

Spätmittelalterliche Bilderhandschriften aus der Bibliotheca Palatina - Late medieval illustrated manuscripts from the University of Heidelberg. It includes a search engine for icons.

Renaissance, reformation and early modern literature

CAMENA (Corpus Automatum Manhemiense Electorum Neolatinitatis Auctorum - Uni. Mannheim) An ongoing digitization project to make the Latin poetry of 50 major German writers of the early-modern period available online.

Frühe Neuzeit Digital - A collection of links to early modern (1500-1800) texts and images.

Luther Bibel (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart) - The revised 1984 edition of Martin Luther's bible translation.

MARABU (Mannheimer Reihe Altes Buch - Uni. Mannheim) - Rare books and manuscripts of the early modern period from old Mannheim libraries, including portrait galleries, emblem and fable books, maps, writings of learned women, sources of the history of the Palatinate.

18th and 19th century literature

Goethes Werke - From the German Literature Collection

Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin - The Hölderlin Gesellschaft's website features a full-text collection of Hölderlin's poetry

Nineteenth century German stories (Virginia Commonwealth University) - A collection of full-text 19th-century German stories, images and teaching materials.

Schillers Werke - From the German Literature Collection

20th century literature

Berthold Brechts Werke - From German Literature Collections comes a searchable online edition of Brecht's complete works, following the Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe.

Kafkas Werke - A searchable edition of Kafka's prose works and diaries, part of the German Literature Collections.

Literarisches Leben Focus on German post-war literature.

Litrix.de: German literature online Focus on contemporary fiction and non-fiction

Electronic collections of literature with significant German language holdings

Alex: A catalogue of electronic texts on the internet (North Carolina State University) - A small number of texts in German by Luther, Marx, and Schiller, as well as the Eberfelder bible translation, are included.  Translations into English of other major German language authors. Browse the catalog by language or search for a particular writer.

German online resources - The University of Virginia's electronic text center provides public access to the full text of works by Hoffmansthal, Kafka, Morgenstern, Moser and Wieland.

Electronic text collections in western European literature (WESS) - Includes German Literature on the Internet, above, as well as other literatures.

Foreign language book archives (The Online Books Page, University of Pennsylvania) - Mostly works in English, but some interesting multilingual titles such as Struwwelpeter (German, French and English). Browse by subject, author, or title. This site works with well established criteria for selection of online texts.

Past masters