(a) _Early Middle High German Poetry._--The beginnings of Middle High
German literature were hardly less tentative than those of the preceding
period. The Saxon emperors, with their Latin and even Byzantine tastes,
had made it extremely difficult to take up the thread where Notker let
it drop. Williram of Ebersberg, the commentator of the _Song of Songs_
(c. 1063), did certainly profit by Notker's example, but he stands
alone. The Church had no helping hand to offer poetry, as in the more
liberal epoch of the great Charles; for, at the middle of the 11th
century, when the linguistic change from Old to Middle High German was
taking place, a movement of religious asceticism, originating in the
Burgundian monastery of Cluny, spread across Europe, and before long all
the German peoples fell under its influence. For a century there was no
room for any literature that did not place itself unreservedly at the
service of the Church, a service which meant the complete abnegation of
the brighter side of life. Repellent in their asceticism are, for
instance, poems like _Memento mori_ (c. 1050), _Vom Glauben_, a verse
commentary on the creed by a monk Hartmann (c. 1120), and a poem on "the
remembrance of death" (_Von des todes gehugede_) by Heinreich von Melk
(c. 1150); only rarely, as in a few narrative Poems on Old Testament
subjects, are the poets of this time able to forget for a time their
lugubrious faith. In the _Ezzolied_ (c. 1060), a spirited lay by a monk
of Bamberg on the life, miracles and death of Christ, and in the
_Annolied_ (c. 1080), a poem in praise of the archbishop Anno of
Cologne, we find, however, some traces of a higher poetic imagination.
The transition from this rigid ecclesiastic spirit to a freer, more
imaginative literature is to be seen in the lyric poetry inspired by the
Virgin, in the legends of the saints which bulk so largely in the poetry
of the 12th century, and in the general trend towards mysticism.
Andreas, Pilatus, Aegidius, Albanius are the heroes of monkish romances
of that age, and the stories of Sylvester and Crescentia form the most
attractive parts of the _Kaiserchronik_ (c. 1130-1150), a long, confused
chronicle of the world which contains many elements common to later
Middle High German poetry. The national sagas, of which the poet of the
_Kaiserchronik_ had not been oblivious, soon began to assert themselves
in the popular literature. The wandering _Spielleute_, the lineal
descendants of the jesters and minstrels of the dark ages, who were now
rapidly becoming a factor of importance in literature, were here the
innovators; to them we owe the romance of _Konig Rother_ (c. 1160), and
the kindred stories of _Orendel_, _Oswald_ and _Salomon und Markolf_
(_Salman und Morolf_). All these poems bear witness to a new element,
which in these years kindled the German imagination and helped to
counteract the austerity of the religious faith--the Crusades. With what
alacrity the Germans revelled in the wonderland of the East is to be
seen especially in the _Alexanderlied_ (c. 1130), and in _Herzog Ernst_
(c. 1180), romances which point out the way to another important
development of German medieval literature, the Court epic. The latter
type of romance was the immediate product of the social conditions
created by chivalry and, like chivalry itself, was determined and
influenced by its French origin; so also was the version of the _Chanson
de Roland_ (_Rolandslied_, c. 1135), which we owe to another priest,
Konrad of Regensburg, who, with considerable probability, has been
identified with the author of the _Kaiserchronik_.
The Court epic was, however, more immediately ushered in by Eilhart von
Oberge, a native of the neighbourhood of Hildesheim who, in his
_Tristant_ (c. 1170), chose that Arthurian type of romance which from
now on was especially cultivated by the poets of the Court epic; and of
equally early origin is a knightly romance of _Floris und Blancheflur_,
another of the favourite love stories of the middle ages. In these
years, too, the Beast epic, which had been represented by the Latin
_Ecbasis captivi_, was reintroduced into Germany by an Alsatian monk,
Heinrich der Glichezaere, who based his _Reinhart Fuchs_ (c. 1180) on the
French _Roman de Renart_. Lastly, we have to consider the beginning of
the _Minnesang_, or lyric, which in the last decades of the 12th century
burst out with extraordinary vigour in Austria and South Germany. The
origins are obscure, and it is still debatable how much in the German
Minnesang is indigenous and national, how much due to French and
Provencal influence; for even in its earliest phases the Minnesang
reveals correspondences with the contemporary lyric of the south of
France. The freshness and originality of the early South German singers,
such as Kurenberg, Dietmar von Eist, the Burggraf of Rietenburg and
Meinloh von Sevelingen, are not, however, to be questioned; in spite of
foreign influence, their verses make the impression of having been a
spontaneous expression of German lyric feeling in the 12th century. The
_Spruchdichtung_, a form of poetry which in this period is represented
by at least two poets who call themselves Herger and "Der Spervogel,"
was less dependent on foreign models; the pointed and satirical strophes
of these poets were the forerunners of a vast literature which did not
reach its highest development until after literature had passed from the
hands of the noble-born knight to those of the burgher of the towns.
(b) _The Flourishing of Middle High German Poetry._--Such was the
preparation for the extraordinarily brilliant, although brief epoch of
German medieval poetry, which corresponded to the reigns of the
Hohenstaufen emperors, Frederick I. Barbarossa, Henry VI. and Frederick
II. These rulers, by their ambitious political aspirations and
achievements, filled the German peoples with a sense of "world-mission,"
as the leading political power in medieval Europe. Docile pupils of
French chivalry, the Germans had no sooner learned their lesson than
they found themselves in the position of being able to dictate to the
world of chivalry. In the same way, the German poets, who, in the 12th
century, had been little better than clumsy translators of French
romances, were able, at the beginning of the 13th, to substitute for
French _chansons de geste_ epics based on national sagas, to put a
completely German imprint on the French Arthurian romance, and to sing
German songs before which even the lyric of Provence paled. National
epic, Court epic and Minnesang--these three types of medieval German
literature, to which may be added as a subordinate group didactic
poetry, comprise virtually all that has come down to us in the Middle
High German tongue. A Middle High German prose hardly existed, and the
drama, such as it was, was still essentially Latin.
The first place among the National or Popular epics belongs to the
_Nibelungenlied_, which received its present form in Austria about the
turn of the 12th and 13th centuries. Combining, as it does, elements
from various cycles of sagas--the lower Rhenish legend of Siegfried, the
Burgundian saga of Gunther and Hagen, the Gothic saga of Dietrich and
Etzel--it stands out as the most representative epic of German medieval
life. And in literary power, dramatic intensity and singleness of
purpose its eminence is no less unique. The vestiges of gradual
growth--of irreconcilable elements imperfectly welded together--may not
have been entirely effaced, but they in no way lessen the impression of
unity which the poem leaves behind it; whoever the welder of the sagas
may have been, he was clearly a poet of lofty imagination and high epic
gifts (see NIBELUNGENLIED). Less imposing as a whole, but in parts no
less powerful in its appeal to the modern mind, is the second of the
German national epics, _Gudrun_, which was written early in the 13th
century. This poem, as it has come down to us, is the work of an
Austrian, but the subject belongs to a cycle of sagas which have their
home on the shores of the North Sea. It seems almost a freak of chance
that Siegfried, the hero of the Rhineland, should occupy so prominent a
position in the _Nibelungenlied_, whereas Dietrich von Bern (i.e. of
Verona), the name under which Theodoric the Great had been looked up to
for centuries by the German people as their national hero, should have
left the stamp of his personality on no single epic of the intrinsic
worth of the _Nibelungenlied_. He appears, however, more or less in the
background of a number of romances--_Die Rabenschlacht_, _Dietrichs
Flucht_, _Alpharts Tod_, _Biterolf und Dietlieb_, _Laurin_, &c.--which
make up what is usually called the _Heldenbuch_. It is tempting, indeed,
to see in this very unequal collection the basis for what, under more
favourable circumstances, might have developed into an epic even more
completely representative of the German nation than the
_Nibelungenlied_.
While the influence of the romance of chivalry is to be traced on all
these popular epics, something of the manlier, more primitive ideals
that animated German national poetry passed over to the second great
group of German medieval poetry, the Court epic. The poet who, following
Eilhart von Oberge's tentative beginnings, established the Court epic in
Germany was Heinrich von Veldeke, a native of the district of the lower
Rhine; his _Eneit_, written between 1173 and 1186, is based on a French
original. Other poets of the time, such as Herbort von Fritzlar, the
author of a _Liet von Troye_, followed Heinrich's example, and selected
French models for German poems on antique themes; while Albrecht von
Halberstadt translated about the year 1210 the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid
into German verse. With the three masters of the Court epic, Hartmann
von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg--all of
them contemporaries--the Arthurian cycle became the recognized theme of
this type of romance, and the accepted embodiment of the ideals of the
knightly classes. Hartmann was a Swabian, Wolfram a Bavarian, Gottfried
presumably a native of Strassburg. Hartmann, who in his _Erec_ and
_Iwein_, _Gregorius_ and _Der arme Heinrich_ combined a tendency towards
religious asceticism with a desire to imbue the worldly life of the
knight with a moral and religious spirit, provided the Court epic of the
age with its best models; he had, of all the medieval court poets, the
most delicate sense for the formal beauty of poetry, for language, verse
and style. Wolfram and Gottfried, on the other hand, represent two
extremes of poetic temperament. Wolfram's _Parzival_ is filled with
mysticism and obscure spiritual significance; its flashes of humour
irradiate, although they can hardly be said to illumine, the gloom; its
hero is, unconsciously, a symbol and allegory of much which to the poet
himself must have been mysterious and inexplicable; in other words,
_Parzival_--and Wolfram's other writings, _Willehalm_ and _Titurel_,
point in the same direction--is an instinctive or, to use Schiller's
word, a "naive" work of genius. Gottfried, again, is hardly less gifted
and original, but he is a poet of a wholly different type. His _Tristan_
is even more lucid than Hartmann's _Iwein_, his art is more objective;
his delight in it is that of the conscious artist who sees his work
growing under his hands. Gottfried's poem, in other words, is free from
the obtrusion of those subjective elements which are in so high a degree
characteristic of _Parzival_; in spite of the tragic character of the
story, _Tristan_ is radiant and serene, and yet uncontaminated by that
tone of frivolity which the Renaissance introduced into love stories of
this kind.
_Parzival_ and _Tristan_ are the two poles of the German Court epic, and
the subsequent development of that epic stands under the influence of
the three poets, Hartmann, Wolfram and Gottfried; according as the poets
of the 13th century tend to imitate one or other of these, they fall
into three classes. To the followers and imitators of Hartmann belong
Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, the author of a _Lanzelet_ (c. 1195); Wirnt von
Gravenberg, a Bavarian, whose _Wigalois_ (c. 1205) shows considerable
imaginative power; the versatile Spielmann, known as "Der Stricker"; and
Heinrich von dem Turlin, author of an unwieldy epic, _Die Krone_ ("the
crown of all adventures," c. 1220). The fascination of Wolfram's
mysticism is to be seen in _Der jungere Titurel_ of a Bavarian poet,
Albrecht von Scharfenberg (c. 1270), and in the still later _Lohengrin_
of an unknown poet; whereas Gottfried von Strassburg dominates the
_Flore und Blanscheflur_ of Konrad Fleck (c. 1220) and the voluminous
romances of the two chief poets of the later 13th century, Rudolf von
Ems, who died in 1254, and Konrad von Wurzburg, who lived till 1287. Of
these, Konrad alone carried on worthily the traditions of the great age,
and even his art, which excels within the narrow limits of romances like
_Die Herzemoere_ and _Engelhard_, becomes diffuse and wearisome on the
unlimited canvas of _Der Trojanerkrieg_ and _Partonopier und Meliur_.
The most conspicuous changes which came over the narrative poetry of the
13th century were, on the one hand, a steady encroachment of realism on
the matter and treatment of the epic, and, on the other, a leaning to
didacticism. The substitution of the "history" of the chronicle for the
confessedly imaginative stories of the earlier poets is to be seen in
the work of Rudolf von Ems, and of a number of minor chroniclers like
Ulrich von Eschenbach, Berthold von Holle and Jans Enikel; while for the
growth of realism we may look to the _Pfaffe Amis_, a collection of
comic anecdotes by "Der Stricker," the admirable peasant romance _Meier
Helmbrecht_, written between 1236 and 1250 by Wernher der Gartenaere in
Bavaria, and to the adventures of Ulrich von Lichtenstein, as described
in his _Frauendienst_ (1255) and _Frauenbuch_ (1257).
More than any single poet of the Court epic, more even than the poet of
the _Nibelungenlied_, Walther von der Vogelweide summed up in himself
all that was best in the group of poetic literature with which he was
associated--the Minnesang. The early Austrian singers already mentioned,
poets like Heinrich von Veldeke, who in his lyrics, as in his epic,
introduced the French conception of _Minne_, or like the manly Friedrich
von Hausen, and the Swiss imitator of Provencal measures, Rudolf von
Fenis appear only in the light of forerunners. Even more original
poets, like Heinrich von Morungen and Walther's own master, Reinmar von
Hagenau, the author of harmonious but monotonously elegiac verses, or
among immediate contemporaries, Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von
Eschenbach, whose few lyric strophes are as deeply stamped with his
individuality as his epics--seem only tributary to the full rich stream
of Walther's genius. There was not a form of the German Minnesang which
Walther did not amplify and deepen; songs of courtly love and lowly
love, of religious faith and delight in nature, patriotic songs and
political _Spruche_--in all he was a master. Of Walther's life we are
somewhat better informed than in the case of his contemporaries: he was
born about 1170 and died about 1230; his art he learned in Austria,
whereupon he wandered through South Germany, a welcome guest wherever he
went, although his vigorous championship of what he regarded as the
national cause in the political struggles of the day won him foes as
well as friends. For centuries he remained the accepted exemplar of
German lyric poetry; not merely the Minnesanger who followed him, but
also the Meistersinger of the 15th and 16th centuries looked up to him
as one of the founders and lawgivers of their art. He was the most
influential of all Germany's lyric poets, and in the breadth,
originality and purity of his inspiration one of her greatest (see
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE).
The development of the German Minnesang after Walther's death and under
his influence is easily summed up. Contemporaries had been impressed by
the dual character of Walther's lyric; they distinguished a higher
courtly lyric, and a lower more outspoken form of song, free from the
constraint of social or literary conventions. The later Minnesang
emphasized this dualism. Amongst Walther's immediate contemporaries,
high-born poets, whose lives were passed at courts, naturally cultivated
the higher lyric; but the more gifted and original singers of the time
rejoiced in the freedom of Walther's poetry of _niedere Minne_. It was,
in fact, in accordance with the spirit of the age that the latter should
have been Walther's most valuable legacy to his successors; and the
greatest of these, Neidhart von Reuental (c. 1180-c. 1250), certainly
did not allow himself to be hampered by aristocratic prejudices.
Neidhart sought the themes of his _hofische Dorfpoesie_ in the village,
and, as the mood happened to dictate, depicted the peasant with humorous
banter or biting satire. The lyric poets of the later 13th century were
either, like Burkart von Hohenfels, Ulrich von Winterstetten and
Gottfried von Neifen, echoes of Walther von der Vogelweide and of
Neidhart, or their originality was confined to some particular form of
lyric poetry in which they excelled. Thus the singer known as "Der
Tannhauser" distinguished himself as an imitator of the French
_pastourelle_; Reinmar von Zweter was purely a _Spruchdichter_. More or
less common to all is the consciousness that their own ideas and
surroundings were no longer in harmony with the aristocratic world of
chivalry, which the poets of the previous generation had glorified. The
solid advantages, material prosperity and increasing comfort of life in
the German towns appealed to poets like Steinmar von Klingenau more than
the unworldly ideals of self-effacing knighthood which Ulrich von
Lichtenstein and Johann Hadlaub of Zurich clung to so tenaciously and
extolled so warmly. On the whole, the Spruchdichter came best out of
this ordeal of changing fashions; and the increasing interest in the
moral and didactic applications of literature favoured the development
of this form of verse. The confusion of didactic purpose with the lyric
is common to all the later poetry, to that of the learned Marner, of
Boppe, Rumezland and Heinrich von Meissen, who was known to later
generations as "Frauenlob." The _Spruchdichtung_, in fact, was one of
the connecting links between the Minnesang of the 13th and the lyric and
satiric poetry of the 15th and 16th centuries.
The disturbing and disintegrating element in the literature of the 13th
century was thus the substitution of a utilitarian didacticism for the
idealism of chivalry. In the early decades of that century, poems like
_Der Winsbeke_, by a Bavarian, and _Der welsche Gast_, written in
1215-1216 by Thomasin von Zirclaere (Zirclaria), a native of Friuli,
still teach with uncompromising idealism the duties and virtues of the
knightly life. But in the _Bescheidenheit_ (c. 1215-1230) of a wandering
singer, who called himself Freidank, we find for the first time an
active antagonism to the unworldly code of chivalry and an unmistakable
reflection of the changing social order, brought about by the rise of
what we should now call the middle class. Freidank is the spokesman of
the _Burger_, and in his terse, witty verses may be traced the germs of
German intellectual and literary development in the coming
centuries--even of the Reformation itself. From the advent of Freidank
onwards, the satiric and didactic poetry went the way of the epic; what
it gained in quantity it lost in quality and concentration. The satires
associated with the name of Seifried Helbling, an Austrian who wrote in
the last fifteen years of the 13th century, and _Der Renner_ by Hugo von
Trimberg, written at the very end of the century, may be taken as
characteristic of the later period, where terseness and incisive wit
have given place to diffuse moralizing and allegory.
There is practically no Middle High German literature in prose; such
prose as has come down to us--the tracts of David of Augsburg, the
powerful sermons of Berthold von Regensburg (d. 1272), Germany's
greatest medieval preacher, and several legal codes, as the
_Sachsenspiegel_ and _Schwabenspiegel_--only prove that the Germans of
the 13th century had not yet realized the possibilities of prose as a
medium of literary expression.