​WICKRAM. JORG, or Georg (d. c. 1560), German poet and novelist, was a native of Colmar in Alsace; the date of his birth is unknown. He passed the latter part of his life as town clerk of Burgheira on the Rhine, and died before 1562. Wickram was a many-sided writer. He founded a Meistersinger school in Colmar in 1549, and has left a number of Mcistersingerlicdcr. He edited Albrecht von Halberstadt's Middle High German version of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1545). and in 1355 he published Das Rollwagcnbilchlein, one of the best of the many German collections of tales and anecdotes which appeared in the 36th century. The title of the book implies its object, namely, to ​supply reading for the traveller in the " Rollwagen " or diligence's. As a dramatist, Wickram wrote Fastnachlsspicle {Das Narrengiessen, 1537; Der Ireuc Eckarl, 1538) and two dramas on biblical subjects, Der verlorcnc Sohn (1540) and Tobias (1551). A moralizing poem, Der irreresiende Pilger (1556), is half-satiric, half-didactic. It is, however, as a novelist that Wickram has left the deepest mark on his time, his chief romances being Ritter Galmy aus Scholtland (1539), GabrioUo nnd Rchihard (1554), Der Knabenspiegel (1554), Von gulen mid biiscn Nachbarn (1556) and Der Goldjaden (1557). These may be regarded as the earliest attempts in German literature to create that modern type of middle-class fiction which ultimately took the place of the decadent medieval romance of chivalry.

Wickram's works have been edited by J. Bolte and W. Scheel for the Stuttgart Litsrarischer Verein (vols., 222, 223, 229, 230, 1900-1903); Der Ritter Calmy was republished by F. de la Motte Fouqufi in 1806; Der Goldjaden by K. Brentano in 1809; the Rollwagenbiichlein was edited by H. Kurz in 1865, and there is also a reprint of it in Reclam's UniversaibiUiothek. See A. Stobcr, J. Wickram (1866); W. Scherer, Die Anfange des deutschen Prosaromans (1877).