300th anniversary of death of Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1976 - 40 Pfennig

The narrator Johann (Hans) Jacob Christoph von Grimmelshausen died 300 years ago on 17 August 1676 in Renchen (Baden). About the year of birth between 1620 and 1625 there are different information. In the Brockhaus Encyclopaedia the following is stated: Grimmelshausen must have been dragged into the throes of war at the age of twelve and witnessed the fighting in Westphalia, on the Upper Rhine and on the Danube, of which his Simplicissimus reports. He is provable 1639/47 as a garrison clerk in Offenburg and since 1650 on the western slope of the Black Forest as estate manager, since 1667 as mayor in Renchen. At least since 1649 he was Catholic. Grown up without a regulated school education, Grimmelshausen self-absorbed the erudition of his time and found his spiritual home in the moral-satirical tradition of the Upper Rhine. In "Chaste Joseph" (1666), in "Dietwald and Amelinde" (1670) and "Proximus and Lympida" (1672) Grimmelshausen sought with modest success to satisfy the claim of the heroic-gallant novel. To his major work, "The Adventurous Simplicissimus Teutsch" (1669), the picaresque novel provided him with the framework; it is the life-story of a youthful adventurer told in first-person form, which, at first unsuspecting, then witty, drifts with happiness, finally realizing that "delusion is attending" and nothing in the world is as constant as the instability; as a recluse he renounces the world. This pessimistic wisdom not only colors Grimmelshausen's blatant depictions of atrocities and vices, but also the grotesque distortions of his portrayal, shaped by his vital humor. The same is true of the female counterpart of the Simplicissimus, the Biography of the Courage (1670), and the more moderate branches of the Simplicissimus, the Seltzamen Springinsfeld (1670), the Eternal Calendar (1670, Faks .-Ndr. 1967) and the "Wonderful Bird's Nest" (1672). For a long time forgotten, Grimmelshausen's work was only rediscovered in the Romantic period, but it was not until 1837 that his name, which he had coded under changing pseudonyms, was regained in literary history. Since then he is considered the most imaginative Fabulierer and most powerful narrator of the Old German time.