Literatur & Philosophie

University of Michigan Library Guide for German Click on the “Full Text” tab to see online texts available for users with a UofM login (e.g. complete or selected works of Goethe, Kafka, Brecht, Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and an extensive collection of German lyric poetry)
General Literary Sites	Collections of texts
Poetry Poetry Collections Individual Poets	Individual authors and texts Goethe Grimm Brothers Others
Philosophy Nietzsche Kant Marx Others

General Literary Sites

Germanistik im Internet Comprehensive resource page compiled by the Universität Erlangen with links to info on all aspects of “Germanistik” (the study of German Literature).
http://www.xlibris.de Click on “Autoren” to see biographies of classical authors and plot summaries of some of their works, or browse the site for other resources.
Projekt Klassikerwortschatz A comprehensive resource page compiled by the Albert-Ludwigs Universität Freiburg, including an extensive
link list, access to various online texts (“Volltexte”), etc.
Inhaltsangabe.info Website created by an (at the time, i.e. 1/2012) 19-year-old German student devoted to plot summaries and occasional brief interpretations of literary texts. Also branches out into other fields, such as Math, English, Biology. Recommended by the German Federal Ministry of Education. Scroll down the page to see the list of texts summarized so far.
inhaltsangabe.de Another webpage with plot summaries of important German and English literary works. Challenging to read, but very informative.

Collections of texts

Projekt Gutenberg The largest collection of German literature on the Internet. Texts are organized for reading online with longer works divided into chapters. There is no provision for searching complete works or the Gutenberg database. The link takes you to their full list of available works (“Werke”), alphabetically arranged by author; this link takes you to the home page, with links to other ways to search (e.g. by author or genre, a list of author’s born on the current day, etc.). Use the tiny “weiter” links at the top of the page for a given text to continue reading that text.
Universität Heidelberg Here you can find a selection of texts digitalized by the Universität Heidelberg, in a wide range of genres besides literature (z.B. Archäologie, Ägyptologie, Astronomie)
19th century German Stories Wonderfully done multimedia editions from Virginia Commonwealth University. Includes Struwwelpeter, Max und Moritz, and a selection of the Grimm fairy tales, as well as a great selection of other texts. For most texts you can find a “story menu” that allows you to read a dual-language version, or to read the text side-by-side with a convenient dictionary window.
Litgloss(University of Buffalo) Collection of extensively glossed texts in various languages. Currently (2024) includes about 20 German texts, some of them only available for University of Buffalo students and faculty (“UB only”).
literatur.primär Contemporary Austrian prose and poetry. Click on “literatur.primär” or “bü.cher” at the top.
Vorleser.net Marvelous site where you can download free mp3 files of various (mostly literary) texts being read aloud in very clear German. Clicking on the audio icon gives you just an excerpt of the text ==> click on the disk icon to download the entire text. You can also click on the “Text lesen” link to see the written version of the text in a separate browser window. To find a specific text, use the Search bar or click on “Autoren.”
Leselupe.de A site that allows contemporary authors to publish their work, and offers numerous resources (mostly free), including audiobooks, e-books, reviews, discussion forums, etc.

Poetry

Poetry Collections

Gedichte Projekt Gutenberg’s collection of German poems
Die deutsche Gedichtebibliothek Awesome older site, unfortunately quite slow now (2024). Provides a comprehensive collection of German poems, and in many cases biographies of the poets and other info.
- If you like Charles Bukowski (who was of German descent), you can find some poems here that he wrote in German.
Lyrikline Search poems [Gedichte] or poets [Autor:innen] by language. Listen to the author read the poem while you follow along in the text. Unfortunately VERY slow (in 2024).

Individual Poets

Morgenstern: Galgenlieder Fun poems!
Paul Celan: A search on YouTube leads to various videos of Celan reading his own poems (including “Todesfuge“); search for the texts to follow along as he reads.
Rilke
Heine

Individual authors and texts

Goethe:

Grimm Brothers :

Märchen – Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm Wonderful site with a large collection of Grimm fairy tales, organized alphabetically, and including, after each tale, a link to tales with similar motifs. If you explore the site, you’ll actually find there a collection of fairy tales and fables from the entire world!
See also the great collection of Grimm fairy tales on the 19th century German Stories site linked above.

Others:

The Kafka Project Mauro Nervi’s effort to make available on the Web editions of Kafka based on the original manuscripts. Includes the three novels, Der Verschollene, Der Proceß and Das Schloß, as well as most (all?) of the shorter pieces, diaries etc.
Wunderbare Reisen zu Wasser und zu Lande, Feldzüge, und lustige Abenteuer des Freiherrn von Münchhausen The “real” text of Baron Münchhausen’s lying tales.
Till Eulenspiegel
Karl May Adventure novels set in the “wild west,” the Arab world, the Balkans and elsewhere, written around the turn of the 19th century; used to be standard fare for German boys.
Shakespeare auf Deutsch!

Philosophy

Nietzsche:

Also sprach Zarathustra Here you can find the complete German text of this book, in case the above link breaks.
Die fröhliche Wisenschaft (This is the source of the famous quotation “Gott ist tot” [spelled “todt” in this text])
Die Geburt der Tragödie

Kant:

Kritik der reinen Vernunft [=Critique of Pure Reason]–Text of the 2nd edition.
Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [=Critique of Practical Reason]
Kritik der Urteilskraft [=Critique of Judgment]
Was ist Aufklärung? [=What is Enlightenment?] Famous text, only a few pages long–a good place to start reading Kant!

Marx:

Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
Kompletter Text der Marx-Engels Werke als pdf zum Download Searchable pdfs of the complete works of Marx & Engels. The prefatory remarks warn against the ideological bias in this edition (the complete edition from 1981), but point out that it continues to be widely cited and thus essential.
Thesen über Feuerbach “Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kömmt drauf an, sie zu verändern.” (“”Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it””)
Lohnarbeit und Kapitel