The innocent murderess (Heinrich Kaufringer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The innocent murderess is a fairy tale by Heinrich Kaufringer and belongs to the group of morally exemplary marries. The story is handed down in the manuscript of Munich cgm 270, which was written in 1464 in Augsburg or Landsberg . The fairy tale is about a future queen who is put into an awkward position by a trick and who doesn't know what to do other than to commit several murders in the course of the story. In the story, the narrator repeatedly defends his main character and equips their opponents with bad character traits.

Material history

This fair exists in a Latin , French , English , Irish and Persian version, whereby the Orient is possibly also considered to be a forerunner in material history.

The starting point of the Irish and Persian versions differs from the presumably later ones. In these the princess takes her secret lover into the palace, is surprised there by her father and takes the lover to a hiding place in which he suffocates. In this Persian version the ending, which was supplemented by a Christian-moral one in the Irish version, is missing. Hence, it is believed that the Irish version was the starting point for all that followed.

The Latin, French and English versions are very similar in content. Three murders take place here, the second and third resulting from the first murder through logical compulsion. The version by Heinrich Kaufringer discussed here is out of line with this story because, in contrast to the other versions, Kaufringer has placed a squire at the side of the knight, who acts as the instigator and direct fourth victim. In addition, Kaufringer left out the miraculous ending.

content

At the beginning of Kaufringer's mare, the narrator takes protection of the murderess. God help those who have complete trust in God.

A noble countess is promised to be a wife to a king. The king's knight hears rumors from his servant that the countess is lewd. He believes the story and forges a plan with his servant. In the evening the countess's brother leaves the castle and leaves her alone with a guard and a gatekeeper. While the servant is waiting in front of the castle with both horses, the knight disguised as a king speaks to the guard: The noble countess should let the king in, he must speak to her. The woman thinks back and forth and finally lets her future husband in, knowing that he can then take something unchecked that could hurt her honor. In the bower arrived, the knight beset the Countess until she surrenders to him. After the act of love, the knight gossips and talks about his servant who told him the truth about the future of the king. The countess is very shocked that the man is not the king with her, and when he fell asleep she beheaded the man who made her lose her honor. This brings the noble countess into further distress, because the body is too heavy for her. So she asks the gatekeeper for help to dispose of the body and promises him great wealth in return. But the gatekeeper wants the same wages that the knight had received and when he cannot be changed by asking again, the desperate countess surrenders to the gatekeeper. Then he helps her to throw the body into the cistern. When he bends over it to let the hull softly into the water so that the guard doesn't hear the impact, the countess seizes the opportunity, grabs the gatekeeper by his feet and throws him into the cistern as well.

The lady hurries back into her bunker and removes all traces of the previous night by morning. The servant is still waiting for his master with the two horses in front of the castle. When the countess's brother returns to his castle, he and his entourage recognize the man with the two horses. But when asked what he is doing here, the servant cannot give an honest answer and so he is condemned as a horse thief and hanged.

The next day the countess is married to the king. But she cannot spend the wedding night with him, since she had already been dishonored. So she asks one of her noble ladies for help, in whom she has the most trust. She wants to reward her with great riches if she lies in bed with the king in the place of the queen and spends the wedding night with him and then leaves the bed if the queen requests her to do so. The maid promises the queen that she will grant all her wishes. But after the king and the young lady have finished their wedding night and fell asleep, the maid does not want to leave the bed because she wants to become queen herself. In this situation, the rightful queen has no choice but to get the young lady out of the way. So the queen waits until the maid has fallen asleep and then sets a fire in the bedroom. The queen wakes the king up, leads him out and pushes the bolt on the door so that the maid burns inside. The king and queen then spend 32 years happily together. But recently the queen found out about the fate of the servant in front of the castle and the other victims also make her think. The king fell asleep with his head in her lap and since she has to think about the events, feels remorse and begins to cry, he is woken by her tears. The king wants to end the suffering of his beloved queen and swears to her that he will do everything possible. When he also promises not to get angry, the queen tells him the whole story. The king forgives her and then forgives her for all of her deeds.

At the end, the narrator takes the floor and affirms the king's forgiveness and the queen's innocence. He affirms their actions and thinks it would be good if all people were dealt with as with those in history who have done evil. He also assures that God stood by the queen all the time, since she was innocently in trouble.

Comparison with the French, Latin and English versions

The Latin and also the English versions go into less detail in their descriptions than the version by Kaufringer. In the French version, the countess is reprimanded for letting her future husband into her bower before the wedding night.

The English version hardly differs from that of Kaufringer regarding the disposal of the corpse. In the French version, the countess asks a maid to help dispose of the knight's body in the cistern. It is then the same maid who goes to bed with the king on the queen's wedding night.

In the Latin version, too, a maid helps the queen to dispose of the corpse, who here calls in a kitchen boy for support. As in Kaufringer's version, the latter wants the maid's love. Now, together with the queen, she uses the moment to kill the kitchen boy. The scene with the wedding night is missing in this Latin version. This is probably due to the fact that the maid had already given herself to the kitchen boy and can now no longer be of any use to the queen.

In all three versions the story ends with a Christian miracle , which Kaufringer lacks.

In the Latin and French versions, the queen does not confess the whole story to her husband, but to a priest. He also demands that she give herself to him, but this time the queen does not want. The clergyman then goes to the king and tells him everything. In the Latin version, the lady is deprived of her royal right and has to leave the country, in the French version she is sentenced to death at the stake by an assembly of the country's greats. In both versions a hermit intervenes as a savior. In the Latin version, a duel between the clergyman and the queen is fought as a penance. The iron tip of the lance is pressed against hers, the wooden shaft against his chest. The duel ends with the common clergyman being pierced by the lance. In the French version, the hermit is asked to stop the punishment in a dream, which he then does.

In the English version, the queen is very repentant and seeks a confessor. He tells her to wear a robe every Friday, to eat only bread and water and to feed poor men. However, this is not enough as a punishment for the queen and she seeks out a priest, who, however, blackmails her, as in the other versions: If she does not give herself to him, he will tell the king everything. In this version, too, the queen refuses. In contrast to the French and Latin versions, the king then insults the queen violently. But then God's power intervenes, because when the king tears her clothes off, he finds a beautiful robe instead of the cowl, the water turned into wine and the bread tastes like the best meat.

In all three versions, the queen rehabilitated herself by resisting the clergyman.

expenditure

  • Joseph Klapper (Ed.): Stories of the Middle Ages. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1978.
  • About the queen who killed her seneschal. In: French folk tales (= fairy tales of world literature ). 2 volumes. Vol. 1: From older sources (here: twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 13. Old French Marian legends). Translation by Ernst Tegethoff. Eugen Diederichs, Jena 1923, OCLC 717687230 , pp. 109–113, full text at zeno.org.
  • Kurt Ruh : Kaufringer's story about the “innocent murderess”. In: Kathryn Smits, Werner Besch , Victor Lange (Hrsg.): Interpretation and edition of German texts from the Middle Ages. Commemorative publication for John Asher. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-503-01670-8 (text partly medium-low German, partly English).

literature

  • Karl Euling: Studies on Heinrich Kaufringer (= Germanistic treatises. H. 18). Verlag von M. & H. Marcus, Breslau 1900, DNB 579771989 ( digitized version of chapter 14: The innocent murderess in the Google book search; reprint: Olms, Hildesheim / New York 1977, ISBN 3-487-06172-4 ).
  • Klaus Grubmüller (Ed.): Novellistics of the Middle Ages. Fairy poetry. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996.
  • Sidney J. H. Herrtage (Ed.): The early English Version of the Gesta Romanorum (= Early English Text Society. Extra series ). Oxford University Press, London / New York / Toronto 1962, OCLC 484985 (first edition 1879).
  • Wolfgang Stammler (founder), Kurt Ruh (Hrsg.): The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author Lexicon. Vol. 4. Second, revised edition. Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin / New York 1983, p. 1078.
  • Marga Stede: Writing in times of crisis. The texts of Heinrich Kaufringer. Scientific publishing house, Trier 1993.
  • Ralf-Henning Steinmetz: Heinrich Kaufringer's self-confident layman morality. In: Contributions to the history of the German language and literature . 121: 47-74 (1999).
  • Arthur Ludwig Stiefel: To the sources of Heinrich Kaufringer . In: Journal for German Philology . tape 35 , 1903, pp. 492–506 ( Text Archive - Internet Archive ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Stammler (original), Kurt Ruh (Hrsg.): The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author Lexicon. Vol. 4. Second, revised edition. Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin / New York 1983, p. 1078.
  2. ↑ a b Joseph Klapper (Ed.): Stories of the Middle Ages. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1978, p. 128 f. and p. 330 f.
  3. ↑ a b c Friedrich von der Lenen, Paul Zaunert (Ed.): The mars of world literature. Jena: Dietrichs Verlag, 1923, pp. 109-113.
  4. ↑ a b Sidney J. H. Herrtage (Ed.): The early English Version of the Gesta Romanorum . Oxford University Press, London / New York / Toronto 1962, p. 394 f.
  5. ↑ Klaus Grubmüller (Ed.): Novellistics of the Middle Ages. Fairy poetry. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 1286 f.
  6. ^ Karl Euling: Studies on Heinrich Kaufringer. Verlag von M. & H. Marcus, Breslau 1900, p. 88 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  7. ↑ Kurt Ruh: Kaufringer's story of the "innocent murderess". In: Kathryn Smits, Werner Besch, Victor Lange (Hrsg.): Interpretation and edition of German texts from the Middle Ages. Commemorative publication for John Asher. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1981, pp. 165–177, here: p. 167, note 8.
  8. ↑ Kurt Ruh: Kaufringer's story of the "innocent murderess". In: Kathryn Smits, Werner Besch, Victor Lange (Hrsg.): Interpretation and edition of German texts from the Middle Ages. Commemorative publication for John Asher. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1981, pp. 165–177, here: p. 170.
  9. ↑ a b c Klaus Grubmüller (Ed.): Novellistics of the Middle Ages. Fairy poetry. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 1287.
  10. ↑ Klaus Grubmüller (Ed.): Novellistics of the Middle Ages. Fairy poetry. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, pp. 798–839.