The swan knight

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The Swan Knight is a Middle High German verse tale that Konrad von Würzburg wrote in the second half of the 13th century.

content

The widow of Duke Gottfried von Brabant files a lawsuit before the Emperor against Gottfried's brother, the Duke of Saxony, because he has taken the Duchy of Brabant by force. An unknown knight arrives in a boat pulled by a swan, competes in court against the duke, defeats him and marries Gottfried's daughter, on the condition that no one asks about his name and origin. Years later, the Duchess breaks the ban and the knight disappears into the boat that once brought him.

Lore

The work has only survived in a collective manuscript together with other works of different genres. This is dated to 1370/80. The language is Rhine-Franconian throughout .

Material history

The popular saga of the swan knight became tangible as early as the 12th century and is spread across Europe. The most famous implementation today is probably Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin .

The swan knight myth in Kleve

The origins of the swan knight tradition on the Lower Rhine, especially in the county of Kleve, are obscure. Already in the 13th century Konrad von Würzburg lists the Lower Rhine princes of Kleve and Geldern, as well as the Rieneckers as descendants of the Brabant swan knight family, but only Gert van der Schuren , who clearly refers to other sources, built this connection into one after 1417 Legend of the origin of the new, Brandenburg ducal house.

In many cases, attempts have now been made to link both traditions. But the so-called Lower Rhine thesis , according to which Konrad von Würzburg stayed at the Klevian court around 1258 and wrote the Swan Knight's legend there on behalf of the count, is pure speculation. What is very well documented, however, is that Konrad lived and worked in Basel for decades.

The historian Heinz Thomas shows a close connection between the recognized poet loyal to the emperor and the ruling house, which he bases on circumstantial evidence. Unlike most literary scholars, he dates the Swan Knight's legend to the 1280s. You don't have to follow your argument in detail to be able to determine that both moved in one cultural area.

In fact, in the 1280s there was at least an indirect connection to the Klevian court: Dietrich VIII von Kleve repeatedly proved to be a loyal ally of the emperor and so it is not surprising that he married the count and his niece Margareta von Neu in 1290 -Kyburg donated. The wedding took place in the presence of Rudolf in Erfurt.

Margareta outlived her husband († 1305) by several decades. In 1318 she entered the Bedburg Premonstratensian monastery , where she died in the 1330s (between 1333/38). It was precisely at this time that a new double tomb was commissioned in Bedburg, at that time the home monastery and burial place of the Klevian family, for Count Arnold I of Kleve, who had died in 1142, and his wife, Ida von Brabant . The special thing about it: For the first time, a Klever Graf is leaning his feet on a swan. This is in fact the first surviving and for a long time the only evidence of a Klevian swan knight tradition.

It is more than likely that the Countess got to know the works of Konrad von Würzburg in her youth. At the latest when they got married, the legend of the Swan Knight gained special significance for them. It would not be improbable if she had donated the tomb, which with Ida von Brabant directly referred to the genealogical connection to this duchy. The work of Konrad von Würzburg would indeed have co-founded the swan knight tradition at Kleve, without the poet himself ever setting foot on Lower Rhine soil.

Text output

  • Edward Schröder (ed.): Smaller poems by Konrad von Würzburg, II: The Swan Knight / The Tournament of Nantes . Zurich 1998, pp. 1–41.
  • Hans Joachim Gernentz (ed.): The Swan Knight. German verse narratives of the 13th and 14th centuries, ed. and from Middle High German translated by HJG, 2nd edition, Berlin 1979, pp. 109-201.
  • Jan Habermehl (ed.): The Swan Knight Konrad of Würzburg. Newly edited from the Frankfurt manuscript and provided with a comment. Frankfurt am Main 2015 online .

literature

  • Hartmut Beckers: Literature at the Klevischen Hof from 1174 to 1542: Testimonies, traces, conjectures . In: Journal for German Philology 112 (1993). Pp. 426-434.
  • Rüdiger Brandt: Konrad von Würzburg. Minor epic works. Schmidt, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-503-04946-0 . (Classics Readings 2)
  • Joachim Bumke: History of German Literature in the High Middle Ages. Munich 1996.
  • Horst Brunner: Genealogical fantasies. To Konrads von Würzburg ´Schwanenritter´ and ´Engelhard´. In: ZfdA. 110: 274-299 (1981).
  • Horst Brunner: The Nantes tournament. Konrad von Würzburg, Richard of Cornwall and the German Princes. In: De poeticis medii aevi quaestiones. Festschr. K. Hamburger. Göppingen 1981, pp. 105-127.
  • Horst Brunner: Konrad in Würzburg and on the Lower Rhine . In: Christian Schmid-Cadalbert (Ed.): The knightly Basel. On the 700th anniversary of the death of Konrad von Würzburg. Public Basel Monument Preservation, Basel 1987, ISBN 3-85556-002-1 , pp. 20–22.
  • Beate Kellner: swan children, swan knights, Lohengrin. Paths of mythical tales . In: Friedrich, Udo (ed.): Presence of the myth. Configurations of a Form of Thought in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. Berlin 2004, pp. 131–154.
  • Albert Leitzmann : To the smaller poems by Konrad von Würzburg. In: PBB. 62, 1938, pp. 361-383.
  • Elisabeth Martschini: Writing and writing in courtly narrative texts of the 13th century. Kiel, Solivagus-Verlag 2014, chapter Konrad von Würzburg: Der Schwanritter p. 187–189, p. 291–556, ISBN 978-3-943025-14-9 .
  • Alfred Ritscher: literature and politics in the area of ​​the first Habsburgs. Poetry, historiography and letters on the Upper Rhine. Lang, Frankfurt / M. 1992, ISBN 3-631-44002-2 .
  • Wiltrud Schnütgen: Literature at the Klevian court. From the high Middle Ages to the early modern period. Boss, Kleve 1990, ISBN 3-89413-187-X .
  • Johannes Spicker: Konrad von Würzburg - a Lower Rhine myth . In: Van der Masen tot op den Rijn: A manual on the history of medieval vernacular literature in the Rhine and Maas area. Schmidt, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-503-07958-0 , pp. 118ff.
  • Peter Strohschneider: Original leaps. Body, violence and writing in the Swan Knight Konrad von Würzburg . In: Horst Wenzel (ed.): Conversations - messengers - letters. Body memory and writing memory in the Middle Ages. Schmidt, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-503-03759-4 , pp. 127-153.
  • Heinz Thomas: Konrad von Würzburg and the Habsburgs. In: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages. 52 (1996). H. 2, pp. 509-545.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Bumke (1996), p. 281, cit. according to: http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~cd2/hdhs/objekte/5981 . The Swan Knight (Konrad von Würzburg).
  2. ^ Marburg Repertory - German-language manuscripts of the 13th and 14th centuries: Konrad von Würzburg. to: handschriftencensus.de