Luther's works, more especially his translation of the Bible, powerfully helped to fix German as a literary language.

The Reformation period, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, was rich in prose literature of every description--in fact, the output of serious German writing continued unabated until well into the seventeenth century.

But the Thirty Years' War, which devastated Germany from end to end, completely swept away the earlier literary culture of the nation.

In fact, the event in question forms a dividing line between the earlier and the modern culture of Germany.

In prose literature, the latter half of the seventeenth century, Germany has only one work to show, though that is indeed a remarkable one--namely, Grimmelshausen's _Simplicissimus_, a romantic fiction under the guise of an autobiography of wild and weird adventure for the most part concerned with the Thirty Years' War.
The rebirth of German literature in its modern form began early in the eighteenth century.