Periodization
- Medieval German literature
- Old High German literature (750-1050)
- Middle High German literature (1050–1300)
- Late medieval German literature/Renaissance (1300–1500)
- Early Modern German literature (see Early Modern literature)
- Humanism and Protestant Reformation (1500–1650)
- Baroque (1600–1720)
- Enlightenment (1680–1789)
- Modern German literature
- Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-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 whether one marks the end of this period with Schiller’s death (1805) or with Goethe’s (1832)
- German Romanticism (1790s-1880s)
- Biedermeier (1815–1848)
- Young Germany (1830–1850)
- Poetic Realism (1848–1890)
- Naturalism (1880–1900)
- Twentieth-century German literature
- 1900-1933
- Fin de siècle (ca. 1900)
- Symbolism
- Expressionism (1910–1920)
- Dada (1914–1924)
- New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit)
- 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
- By country
- 1900-1933
- Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century German literature
Christian Kresall 