Codex Palatinus germanicus 67

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Cod. Pal. germ. 67, sheet 1r: Sigenot - narrator and listener

The Codex Palatinus germanicus 67 is a late medieval manuscript from the former Bibliotheca Palatina in Heidelberg . The Codex belongs to the Codices Palatini germanici , the German-language manuscripts of the Palatina, which have been kept in the Heidelberg University Library since 1816 ; The signature of the Heidelberg University Library and the common scientific name is Cod. Pal. germ. 67 (short form: Cpg 67 ).

The illuminated manuscript is a copy of the younger Sigenot , a heroic epic of medieval Dietrichepik .

The unusually richly illustrated work was made by Ludwig Henfflin's workshop around 1470 , probably in Stuttgart.

description

Cod. Pal. germ. 67, sheet 18v: Sigenot - Dietrich's fight with the wild man, the dwarf Baldung tied to the ground (picture 7 of 14 of this fight illustration)
Cod. Pal. germ. 67, sheet 19r: Sigenot - Dietrich's fight with the wild man, the dwarf Baldung tied to the ground (picture 8 of 14 of this fight illustration)
Cod. Pal. germ. 67, sheet 21v: Sigenot - Dietrich cuts off the arms of the wild man, in the background the dwarf Baldung applauds (picture 13 of 14 of this battle illustration)
Cod. Pal. germ. 67, Ottheinrich binding , front cover

The Codex is a paper manuscript with 106 leaves. The foliation of the 17th century changes from sheet 7 on from the usual recto to the verso pages. In the further course it becomes incorrect: from sheet 90 the counting continues with sheet 41–51, correct would be 91–101. The sheets written on with text are numbered; the leaves 1 * –2 * and 102 * –104 * carry modern counts.

The sheet size of the manuscript is 19.8 × 14.5 cm, a writing space of 7.5–8 × 7.5–8 cm is described with 13 lines per page, in some cases a line structure drawn in ink can be seen. The text is written in verses and broken after each verse, on each page there is a complete stanza, written in a bastarda by one hand. On sheet 96r there is an additional comment by the same hand under the text block: O Shar o Shar las , behind it a sign, probably a number sign. Sheet 102r * bears the clerk entry Lud. [wig] Hennfflin . Sheet 30r has remained empty, except for the addition of an illustration frame in the upper half of the page, without any text being lost. Apart from the illustrations, there are no other decorative elements.

Before the restoration of the manuscript in 1962 by Hans Heiland's Stuttgart workshop, all the sheets suffered from severe decay on the green-colored passages of the miniatures. The restorer's “repair report”, glued onto an additional sheet in front of the rear view mirror, provides information about the restoration processes: According to this, excess paint was removed from each sheet, the green painted areas were protected on the sheets concerned by applying Japanese paper and glue. In addition, the layers have been re-stitched, the leather back has been renewed and two strap buckles have been added.

Miniatures

With 201 colored pen drawings, the manuscript is remarkably rich in miniatures ; all representations are made by a draftsman who has been called draftsman A since Hans Wegener's ( Descriptive Directory , 1927) discovery of the connection between the workshop Henfflin manuscripts . On each of the 101 sheets of text there is an illustration of the respective content in the upper half of each page. H. every single stanza of the verse was illustrated: “an incredible amount of representations”. The miniatures primarily show scenes of dialogue and combat, so exactly what the text says.

In addition to the sheer number of illustrations, their layout is striking. They differ only minimally on many sides, in the position of the legs or the position of the weapons in the fight scenes, in the body posture and the gestures of the characters in the dialogue scenes. In older research this was seen as a weakness of the draftsman. Wegener judged in 1927 that the quality of the draftsman's work was “quite insignificant” overall, from his point of view the colored drawings were “carefully, but very temperamentally and unimaginative”; he was surprised by “individual scenes [...] through their primitiveness the representation ". Wegener rates Sigenot's illustration in particular as “very uniform and boring”.

The more recent research, on the other hand, emphasizes the entertaining character of the picture sequences and the clarity of the representations from the Henfflin workshop , also sees the effort to gain perspective compared to earlier Alsatian illustrators and emphasizes the correctness of the proportions in the figure representation. Only the facial expressions are described as "largely expressionless", the faces often show "a cheerfulness that does not match the text". A special feature of the drawings is their modern narrative character and the richness of detail in the representations. The illustrator from the Henfflin workshop actually designed “ cycles of illustration” and often made use of the trick of “simultaneous illustration” by depicting successive situations of a story in parallel in a single representation. The Sigenot manuscript Cod. Pal. Germ. 67 becomes - precisely because of the minimal changes in the representation and the often very same background - a " flip book " when you leaf through the drawings quickly, which is made possible by the digitization of the handwriting.

cover

The binding is a typical Ottheinrich binding in brown leather with blind-printed roller stamps , brass fittings and strap clasps , probably made by Jörg Bernhardt.

On the front cover there is a gold-plated plate with the portrait of Ottheinrich in a cartridge , in which the abbreviation OH (Ottheinrich) is noted above and the abbreviation PC (Pfalzgraf, Churfürst) below . Above the cartouche is a gold-stamped angel's head, below the also gold-plated year of manufacture of the binding: 1558 . The coat of arms of the Palatinate is placed in a cartouche on the similarly gilded plate on the back cover.

origin

The manuscript was produced by Ludwig Henfflin's workshop around 1470 , probably in Stuttgart. The otherwise unrelated scribe Lud. [wig] Hennfflin calls himself at the end of the manuscript (sheet 102r *); A workshop was named after this individual scribe entry, from which nine manuscripts have survived in the collection of the Heidelberg University Library. The writing language is West Swabian.

The client was Margarethe von Savoyen (1420–1479), who was married to Ulrich V (1413–1480), Count of Württemberg-Stuttgart , in her third marriage . The only child from her second marriage to the Palatinate Elector Ludwig IV (1424–1449), Elector Philipp von der Pfalz (1448–1508) inherited the manuscript after Margaret's death in 1479. The manuscript came from Stuttgart to Heidelberg and became later Part of the Bibliotheca Palatina .

Presumably, Cod. Pal. germ. 67 of a manuscript that was recorded in the cataloging of the older castle library in 1556/59 with the catalog entry: Ris Signot geschriben papir mitt schön figuren 1.4.10 . The table of contents on the front mirror is an entry by the librarian Hermann Finke from the 20th century.

Like the other manuscripts of the Electoral Palatinate Libraries, the Codex came into the possession of the Vatican Library in Rome after the conquest of the Electoral Palatinate in the Thirty Years War in 1622 and was only brought to Heidelberg in 1816 with the other German-language holdings of the Palatina as part of the regulations during the Congress of Vienna returned.

Content

The manuscript is part of the tradition of Sigenot , an epic verse about the legendary battle between the hero Dietrich von Bern and the giant Sigenot:

In a conversation with his old comrade-in-arms Hildebrand, Dietrich learns about the terrible giant and, contrary to Hildebrand's advice, immediately sets out to look for Sigenot and challenge him to fight. The epic then describes four battles of the heroes (the sheet number in each case in brackets in Cod. Pal. Germ. 67 ), interrupted by long passages of conversation:

  • To free the dwarf Baldung, Dietrich fights against a wild man and defeats him (sheets 15v-22r),
  • Dietrich fights against Sigenot, in turn is defeated by the giant, tied up and thrown into a snake pit (sheets 30v-59r),
  • Hildebrand fights against Sigenot, is also defeated and tied up (sheets 69r – 81r), but can break free, and
  • Hildebrand fights Sigenot again, finally defeating and slain him (sheets 84r – 92v).

Hildebrand then frees Dietrich from the snake pit and the two heroes ride home.

The stanza form of the text is the so-called Bernerton , a 13-line stanza with complex rhyme ties and an orphan in the twelfth verse. The text is based on a non-preserved original that was probably written in the Swabian-Alemannic region before the end of the 13th century; the author is unknown. Two surviving versions of the epic developed from this model, a shorter version with 44 stanzas, the so-called Elder Sigenot , and a long version with around 200 stanzas, known as the Younger Sigenot . The last-mentioned version is in eight manuscripts, including Cod. Pal. Germ. 67 with 201 stanzas, and more than 20 prints survived. The miniatures of Cod. Pal. germ. 67 were presumably used as a template for the woodcuts in the oldest surviving print of the work, which was made in Augsburg in 1487 by the printer Johann Bämler .

The work is viewed by modern literary scholars as artistically inferior, but - quite apart from the manuscripts - it was practically a bestseller in late medieval book production; it was reprinted again and again well into the 17th century and, measured by the number of traditions, is that most successful work of Dietrichepik .

See also

literature

  • Karin Zimmermann : Cod. Pal. Germ. 67. 'Sigenot'. In: Karin Zimmermann (arrangement), with the participation of Sonja Glauch, Matthias Miller, Armin Schlechter: The Codices Palatini germanici in the Heidelberg University Library (Cod. Pal. Germ. 1–181). Catalogs of the Heidelberg University Library, Volume 6. Reichert Verlag , Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 978-3-89500-152-9 , pp. 186-187 ( digitized version ).

Older catalogs:

  • Karl Bartsch : Pal. germ. 67. Sigenot. In: Karl Bartsch: The old German manuscripts of the university library in Heidelberg. Catalog of the manuscripts of the University Library in Heidelberg, Volume 1. Verlag von Gustav Koester, Heidelberg 1887, No. 43, pp. 19-20 ( digitized version ).
  • Hans Wegener : Sigenot. pal. germ. 67. In: Hans Wegener: Descriptive directory of the German picture manuscripts of the late Middle Ages in the Heidelberg University Library. Verlagbuchhandlung J. J. Weber, Leipzig 1927, p. 79 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Cod. Pal. germ. 67  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Unless otherwise noted, the information in this section with subsections follows the description by Karin Zimmermann: Cod. Pal. germ. 67 . In: The Codices Palatini germanici in the Heidelberg University Library (Cod. Pal. Germ. 1–181) . Wiesbaden 2003, p. 186 ( digitized version ; accessed April 5, 2020).
  2. ↑ Zimmermann 2003, p. 185 ( digitized version of the page , Heidelberg University Library; accessed April 7, 2020).
  3. ^ Digitized version of the repair report , Heidelberg University Library; accessed April 7, 2020. Also available as a Wikimedia Commons file .
  4. ↑ Ulrike Spyra, Maria Effinger: Codex Palatinus germanicus 67: Das Heldenepos 'Sigenot' , Heidelberg University Library, 09/2008; accessed April 7, 2020.
  5. ↑ all quotations from Wegener's description of the biblical manuscript Cod. Pal. germ. 16 (also from the Henfflin workshop ) and related to the draftsman A , from whom almost all illustrations of the nine manuscripts of the Henfflin workshop come. Hans Wegener: The workshop of Ludwig Hennfflin , descriptive directory ... , Leipzig 1927, pp. 75–76 ( digitized ; accessed April 7, 2020).
  6. ↑ Hans Wegener: Sigenot (pal. Germ. 67), descriptive directory ... , Leipzig 1927, p. 79 ( digitized version ; accessed April 7, 2020).
  7. ↑ Ulrike Spyra, Maria Effinger: Swabian workshop of Ludwig Henfflin , Heidelberg University Library 03/2012; accessed April 3, 2020.
  8. ↑ Ulrike Spyra, Maria Effinger: Cod. Pal. germ. 16-18: 3-volume bible, AT, German , UB-Heidelberg 03/2012; accessed April 3, 2020.
  9. ↑ A presentation of images of the manuscript as a “flip book” cartoon is provided by Spyra / Effinger: Cod. Pal. germ. 67 , UB-Heidelberg, 09/2008; accessed April 7, 2020.
  10. ↑ Unless otherwise noted, the information in this section follows the description by Karin Zimmermann: Cod. Pal. germ. 67 . In: The Codices Palatini germanici in the Heidelberg University Library (Cod. Pal. Germ. 1–181) . Wiesbaden 2003, p. 186 ( digitized version ; accessed April 5, 2020).
  11. ↑ s. Digitized ; accessed April 7, 2020. Also available as a Wikimedia Commons file .
  12. ↑ Ulrike Spyra, Maria Effinger: Swabian workshop of Ludwig Henfflin , web presence UB-Heidelberg, 03/2012; accessed April 7, 2020.
  13. ↑ Cod. Pal. lat. 1937, sheet 92r ( digitized version of the catalog page , Heidelberg University Library; accessed April 8, 2020).
  14. ↑ Historical overview on the website of the Heidelberg University Library : The Bibliotheca Palatina - Fates of a world-famous library ; accessed April 8, 2020. Detailed description with further information from Karin Zimmermann in: The Codices Palatini germanici in the Heidelberg University Library (Cod. Pal. germ. 1–181) . Wiesbaden 2003, Introduction , pp. XI – XXVIII ( digitized version ; accessed April 8, 2020).
  15. ↑ Unless otherwise noted, the information in this section follows the description by Karin Zimmermann: Cod. Pal. germ. 67 . In: The Codices Palatini germanici in the Heidelberg University Library (Cod. Pal. Germ. 1–181) . Wiesbaden 2003, pp. 186–187 ( digitized version ; accessed April 5, 2020).
  16. ↑ cf. Joachim Heinzle : 'Sigenot' . In: The German literature of the Middle Ages, author's lexicon , Volume 8. De Gruyter Publishing House , Berlin / New York 1992/2010 (VL 2 ), Sp. 1236–1239.
  17. ↑ Joachim Heinzle: 'Sigenot' . In: The German literature of the Middle Ages, author's lexicon , volume 8. Verlag De Gruyter , Berlin / New York 1992/2010 (VL 2 ), column 1238.