I.

Introduction

Austrian Literature, literature written in German from the 16th century to the present by authors of Austrian nationality and of distinguishable Austrian national consciousness. Although the unknown author of the medieval Nibelungenlied and the greatest German minnesinger, Walther von der Vogelweide, were both Austrian, an Austrian culture distinct from that of Germany developed only after the Counter-Reformation, when in the 16th century Roman Catholic Austria and Protestant Germany were separated. As Spain and Italy were at times part of the Habsburg empire, Austrian literature was influenced by both Spanish drama and Italian opera.