Jörg Wickram (~1505-1562) was a German writer from the Alsace region (now France) who straddled the Renaissance and Early Modern periods of literature development.
Wickram's versatile output ranged from translation work (he translated Ovid without knowing any latin) to poetry, dramatic narratives and collections of humorous anecdotes (Schwank) that drew influence from Sebastian Brandt's 'Ship of Fools' (1494), animal fable satires and the medieval minnesang tradition (seen here recently). Although these collected tales were popular, Wickram is perhaps best known for producing the earliest forms of the novel in German literature.
'Kurtzweil' (1550) is a lesser known work of poetry in the vernacular German by Wickram, featuring crude anthropomorphic woodcut illustrations, reminiscent of (but predating) Le Monde Renversé satires. There is next to nothing by way of commentary around online, but I think it's a fairly safe bet that 'Kurtzweil' belongs to the satirical/moral body of Schwank anthologies, prevalent in 16th century German literature.
- 'Kurtzweil' is online at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek - the images above (cleaned up somewhat) were extracted from the pdf version that is available at the top right of the page (I had not noticed that link for MDZ digital works previously. The quality is identical to the display pages.)
- Biographical: Bartleby, Wikipedia, Bibliotheca Augustana (in German).
- Georg Wickram - the Author Censoring Himself, essay © Elisabeth Wåghäll.
- German Literature from the 1911 Encylopedia Britannica.
- Excerpts from 'A History of German Literature' by W Beutin, 1993.
- There is a Jörg Wickram website in German that I don't pretend to understand but I think it was put together by a fan and provides background information about the places featured in one of Wickram's popular anthologies, 'Das Rollwagenbuchlein'. (there is more than that here, though)
- For the keen: 'The Individualization of Fortune in the Sixteenth-Century Novels of Jörg Wickram: The Beginnings of the Modern Narrative in German Literature', 2007 by Cordula Politis. (some commentary)