German Knittelvers, a verse form consisting of 4-stress rhyme pairs, is often described by adjectives such as holprig and höckerig, which refer to its simple, uneven and seemingly awkward construction, and komisch, derb, obszön, referring to its often comical and sometimes obscene or vulgar content. Wolfgang Kayser refers to this verse form as bieder, volkstümlich, deutsch. An exact definition of Knittelvers is complicated by the fact that descriptions of this verse form since the seventeenth century have been based not only on its metrical structure, but also on some of its lexical, semantic and syntactic characteristics.
In this talk I will trace the evolution and development of varying manifestations of German Knittelvers from the eighteenth to the early twenty-first century and give examples of its use in dramatic and non-dramatic literature as well as in advertising, political chants and slogans, protest songs, and other social contexts such as personal letters, Faschingsreden and speeches for special occasions.
