Early Icons of German Culture Trivia Quiz

Answer: Walther von der Vogelweide

Minnesang, meaning "love song," was a form of German lyric poetry in the Middle High German period. Walther von der Vogelweide (about 1170 to about 1230) was probably its best known writer. He was also the author of a lot of political poetry, including satire and moralizing.

Wieland der Schmied was a legendary blacksmith dating back to Old Norse, German, and Old English traditions. Chrétien de Troyes was a 12th Century French poet known for his Arthurian stories. Dafydd ap Gwilym was a great Welsh poet of the 14th century.

Answer: Wolfram von Eschenbach

Wolfram, of whose life very little is actually known, based his "Parzival," the first German work based on the Holy Grail legend, on the same story by France's Chrétien de Troyes.

Hiëronymus van Alphen was a Dutch legal scholar and officeholder who lived from 1746 to 1803. Perhaps Germany's greatest poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived from 1749 to 1832. Heinrich von Kleist, after whom a prestigious German literary prize is named, was a poet, novelist, and dramatist who lived from 1777 to 1811.

Answer: Hildegard von Bingen

Hildegard was beatified by Pope John XXII in 1326 and canonized as a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. A Benedictine abbess, she is credited with founding scientific natural history in Germany. Besides being a writer and composer, she has been described as a Christian mystic, visionary, philosopher, and polymath.

Bertha von Suttner was a novelist and pacifist who lived from 1843 to 1914. In 1905 she became the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Annette von Droste-Hülshoff was a German composer and writer who lived from 1797 to 1848. Marlene Dietrich was a well-known German singer and actress who lived from 1901 to 1992.

Answer: Hans Sachs

While the Minnesänger were largely knights and nobles, the Meistersänger were mostly commoners. Hans Sachs practised his trade of shoemaking as a life-long career. He was also an ardent follower of Martin Luther and a great proponent of the Reformation.

Frans Hals was a portrait painter of the Dutch Golden Age. He lived from 1582 to 1666 and is perhaps best known for his "Laughing Cavalier." Hans Blix is a Swedish diplomat and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who was born in 1928. Klaus Fuchs was a physicist who was convicted of selling information on the Manhattan Project to the Soviets. He lost his British citizenship and spent the end of his career in East Germany. He died in 1988.

Answer: Albrecht Dürer

Dürer was also in communication with Rafael and Leonardo da Vinci and was patronized by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.

Grass and Hesse were both novelists and each won a Nobel Prize in Literature, Hesse in 1946 and Grass in 1999. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister and dissident against the Nazi regime. He was executed by the Nazis in 1945.

Answer: Tilman Riemenschneider

Riemenschneider was one of the first sculptors who did not have his work extensively painted by other artists.

Caspar David Friedrich lived from 1774 to 1840. Best known for allegorical landscapes, he is often considered the greatest German painter of his time. Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry is often described as lyrically intense and mystical. He was born in Prague and died in 1926. I know of no one named Heinrich Holzschnitt, which is a name I made up meaning Henry Woodcut.

Answer: Martin Schongauer

Schongauer's contemporaries also referred to him as "Hübsch Martin" ("pretty Martin") and "Martin Schön" ("Martin beautiful").

Adalbert Stifter was an Austrian poet, writer, and painter who lived from 1805 to 1868. Clemens Brentano was a major German poet and writer of the Romantic era. He lived from 1778 to 1842. Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer best known for his innovative symphonies and sacred choral works. He lived from 1824 to 1896.

Answer: Johann Pachelbel

Pachelbel's influence on Bach was indirect, as the latter was tutored by an older brother named Johann Christoph, who had studied with Pachelbel.

Robert Schumann was one of the greatest composers of the Romantic movement. He lived from 1810 to 1856 and had eight children. Mendelssohn, whose full name was Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, lived from 1809 to 1847 and was also a noted Romantic composer. Engelbert Humperdinck was a late Romantic composer best known for his opera "Hänsel und Gretel." He lived from 1854 to 1921.

Answer: Matthias Grünewald

The "Isenheim Altarpiece" is so named because it was painted for the Monastery of St. Anthony in Isenheim, a commune in Alsace and is in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar. Thus, Ruprecht Isenheim is an alias I created for this quiz. The altarpiece itself has two sets of wings which fold out to reveal three different presentations.

In 1938 composer Paul Hindemith wrote an opera based on Grünewald's life, called "Mathis der Maler." Hindemith, who died in 1963, was a teacher and conductor as well as a violinist and composer. Käthe Kollwitz, who lived from 1867 to 1945, was a painter, printmaker, and sculptor, much of whose work depicts the effects of war on the working class. She was the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Art.

Answer: Sebastian Brant

Brant also created a large volume of writing on civil and canon law, as well as a compilation of fables and other stories. "Das Narrenschiff" is a satirical look at abuses of the Church.

Bertolt Brecht, who died in East Berlin in 1956, was a leading playwright of the Epic theater movement, which sought to reflect political realities of the mid 20th Century. Among his best-known works are "Mother Courage and Her Children" and "The Threepenny Opera." Only Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a comparable poet, playwright, and philosopher to Friedrich Schiller, who had a complicated friendship with the former. Schiller lived from 1759 to 1805. The Austrian Stefan Zweig was a dramatist, novelist, and poet who was born in Vienna in 1881 and died in Rio de Janeiro in 1942.