Medieval Voices

German Literature

Course 1 · Chapter 2 · Medieval Voices

The oldest German literature survives in fragments, and its great flowering comes around 1200, in the courts of the Holy Roman Empire. This chapter looks at the earliest scrap of heroic verse, the Nibelungenlied, the knightly romance in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, and the love lyric of the Minnesänger, above all Walther von der Vogelweide. It treats these as works read in the Middle High German of their day and mostly in translation now. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

From Fragments to Courts

The earliest verse

The Hildebrandslied, a fragment of heroic poetry about a father and son who meet in battle, survives in a single manuscript copied around the ninth century (check). It is the best-known piece of Old High German heroic verse, and it breaks off before the ending.

Middle High German

Around 1200 courtly poets wrote in Middle High German, a written language that varied by region (check). Their audiences were nobles listening to recitation, and most poems were meant to be heard or sung, not read silently.

Three kinds of poetry

Heroic epic (Nibelungenlied), courtly romance (Parzival, Gottfried's Tristan) and the love lyric of the Minnesang together make up what is often called the classical period of medieval German literature (check the label).

The Nibelungenlied

  • What it is. An anonymous epic poem written down around 1200, probably in the Danube region of Bavaria and Austria (check), in stanzas of four long lines.
  • The story. Siegfried wins Kriemhild, helps Gunther win Brünhild by trickery and is murdered by Hagen. Kriemhild takes a terrible revenge years later that destroys the Burgundians and herself.
  • The tone. The first half is a courtly tale of love and honour. The second is a bleak story of vengeance and loyalty pushed to destruction.
  • Sources. It draws on older heroic legends, some going back to the fifth century (check), reworked in a courtly setting.
  • Afterlife. Rediscovered in the eighteenth century and made a national epic in the nineteenth, it later inspired Wagner's Ring cycle (see German Music) and was misused by nationalists (check the details and the political uses).

Parzival and the Courtly Romance

Work and author (check each)Note
Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach (about 1200 to 1210)A long Grail romance about a young knight who grows up ignorant of the world, fails at the Grail castle by not asking the right question, and later returns. It follows a French source by Chrétien de Troyes and reshapes it with a stronger moral and spiritual drama.
Tristan, Gottfried von Strassburg (about 1210)A romance of the lovers Tristan and Isolde, unfinished, with a more worldly and psychological treatment of passion.
Iwein and Erec, Hartmann von AueArthurian romances that brought French models into German and set a standard for courtly verse.
Wolfram's voice Wolfram speaks to the audience in a jokey, personal way, calls himself a knight who cannot read (check how seriously to take that), and mocks his rivals. This mix of high seriousness and humour is a mark of the period and a reminder that poems were performed to listeners.

Minnesang and Walther von der Vogelweide

Minnesang

Minne means courtly love. The Minnesänger sang of a lady who could not be won, in a convention of longing and service. Poems survive mostly in large manuscripts compiled later, such as the Manesse manuscript of the fourteenth century (check).

Walther von der Vogelweide

Active around 1200 (check dates), Walther wrote love songs, but also political and moral verse, commenting on emperors and the Pope. His poem "Under der linden", about a girl's secret meeting in the open, is among the best known.

The music

Most Minnesang was sung, but only a small number of melodies survive and their rhythm is uncertain (check), so modern performances involve reconstruction.

A British comparison The closest British parallel is the Arthurian tradition, with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Malory, which also draws on French romance. The Nibelungenlied can be set beside Beowulf as a heroic poem of a doomed society, though Beowulf is much older (check).
Check the details Dates of medieval works are approximate, authors are often known only by name, and the manuscripts are later copies. Read a translation that says which edition it follows, and verify claims about the poems' origins and later political use before repeating them.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Summarise the story of the Nibelungenlied in two halves and explain how the tone changes between them.

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Exercise 2

Compare a heroic epic and a courtly romance from this chapter in terms of subject, values and the audience they imagine.

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Exercise 3

Explain why medieval poems are hard to date and attribute, and how a reader should treat a claim such as "Walther wrote this in 1198".

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Quick Reference

  • Earliest verse: the Hildebrandslied fragment (check)
  • Epic: the Nibelungenlied, anonymous, about 1200 (check)
  • Romance: Wolfram's Parzival, Gottfried's Tristan, Hartmann
  • Lyric: Minnesang, Walther von der Vogelweide
  • The caution: approximate dates, later manuscripts, translation choices