Knaben Wunderhorn, Des

▪ work by Arnim and Brentano

      (1805–08; German: “The Boy's Magic Horn”), anthology of German folk songs, subtitled Alte deutsche Lieder (“Old German Songs”), that established its editors, the poet Clemens Brentano (Brentano, Clemens) and the antiquarian Achim von Arnim (Arnim, Achim von) (qq.v.), as leaders of the Romantic movement by reviving enthusiasm for the Volkslied (“folk song,” or “peasant song”) tradition in German lyric poetry. Reputedly genuine folk songs dating from the Middle Ages, many of the poems were, in fact, either anonymously composed by such 17th-century poets as Simon Dach and Hans Jacob Grimmelshausen or rewritten by Brentano and Arnim to improve what Arnim called “authentically historical discords.” Attacked by philologists for historical inaccuracies but praised by J.W. von Goethe, to whom it was dedicated, Des Knaben Wunderhorn preserves many of the melodic, spontaneous phrases and metres of old German folk songs.

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