Heinrich von Kempten

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Wall painting on the south facade of the Kempten town hall
Album of poetry ( Otto the Great and Heinrich von Kempten ), Die Gartenlaube (1853), page 147

Heinrich von Kempten (also Otte with the beard ) is a Middle High German verse tale that Konrad von Würzburg wrote in the second half of the 13th century. In a first part the exile of the knight Heinrich from the court of the emperor Otto is told and in the second part the regaining of the imperial grace is told.

content

The action begins without a prologue .

1st part: courtyard part

During Easter in Bamberg Castle, the son of the Duke of Swabia takes bread from the table before the official opening of the meal. Because of this violation of the courtly manners he is the steward struck the Emperor Otto. As a counter-reaction, the knight Heinrich von Kempten kills the Truchsessen with a club in order to punish the violence against the noble boy who is in his care. When the Emperor arrives, he is angry about the death of the Truchessen, so that he sentenced Heinrich to death. This is not given the opportunity to represent his position, so he puts a knife at the emperor's throat. The emperor is forced to withdraw the death sentence; but he forbids Heinrich ever to come back to court. Heinrich then returns to Swabia unmolested.

2nd part: Italy part

Emperor Otto wants to wage war, and Heinrich's lord must also support the emperor as a vassal . This forces Heinrich as his ministerial to come to the court. The emperor negotiates with a delegation from a besieged city. However, this plans to murder the emperor. At the same time Heinrich was bathing nearby and immediately jumped out of the tub to defend the emperor armed but without any clothing. After defeating the townspeople, Heinrich disappears undetected. The rescued emperor returns to his camp and wants to clarify the identity of his savior. After Heinrich is named, there is a reconciliation between Heinrich and the emperor.

In the epilogue , the narrator calls on all knights to act boldly, following the example of Heinrich von Kempten.

Lore

Six complete manuscripts (Hss.) And a fragment survive this work; the verse length varies between 722 and 770 verses. The 'Heinrich von Kempten' has come down to us in collective and miscellular manuscripts together with other works of various genres. The manuscripts are dated to the 14th and 15th centuries, one in the 17th century. The language is Upper German throughout with the varieties Bavarian and Upper Palatinate as well as Rhine / Middle Franconian (only Hs. H). Only in the Hss. P, K, H, V, I does the work have a slightly different title: Von keizer otten .

Material history

In the epilogue, the narrator refers to Latin sources and the fables of both parts are actually contained in Latin, but also German chronicles . A direct source by Konrad cannot be determined, however, because there is no perfect correspondence with another text and because the chronicles only ever contain either the first (court part) or the second part (Italian part). Whether the source is lost or whether Konrad himself created the direct connection between two parts cannot be determined. It is true that local legends convey the material that agree more clearly with Konrad's version than the chronicles; However, these legends are only tangible at a later time, and it is therefore not possible to determine whether the legends are based on Konrad's text, whether Konrad used the legends as models, or whether both have another source.

research

In research there is consensus on the ambivalent characterization of the individual figures and modes of action. The boy, the boy, Heinrich, Otto, the townspeople are all both perpetrators and victims. The valid ruler's and knight virtues (see prince mirror ) are thematized in the text, but not exemplarily, but rather broken down. For example, the labeling of Emperor Otto as being bad , as a bad person, reflects inappropriate behavior on the part of an emperor. The recipient can thus immediately recognize the latent potential for conflict . Opinio communis is that the Emperor Otto lets himself be guided by affects at the beginning and can control himself at the end. Heinrich von Kempten always uses brute force, but can prove himself as a hero by rescuing the emperor.

It is precisely this ambivalence that creates the complexity of the narrative. Because the text thus evades a unified message. Rather, the focus seems to be on the issue of conflict regulation: The issue of the functions of violence, which can both establish and maintain order, as well as threaten and destroy. The exaggeration and the drastic nature of the description as well as the improbability of the chain of events have also raised the interpretations of comization and ironization in research.

In the end, the text does not offer a normative answer to how “one” could best behave, how to deal with violence or when it should be used in which form, but rather it shows ambiguous evaluations of characters and modes of action in relation to violence.

Text output

  • Smaller poems by Konrad von Würzburg, I: Der Welt Lohn - Das Herzmaere - Heinrich von Kempten. Edited by Edward Schröder . 3rd edition Berlin 1959.
  • Konrad von Würzburg: Heinrich von Kempten, Der Welt Lohn, Das Herzmaere. Middle High German text based on the edition by Edward Schröder. Transl., With a note and an afterthought. by Heinz Rölleke . Stuttgart 2000
  • Konrad von Würzburg: Emperor Otto and Heinrich von Kempten: illustration of the entire tradition and materials for the history of material. Edited by ANDRÉ SCHNYDER. Göppingen 1989 (Litterae 109)
  • KA Hahn: Otte with the beard. Quedlinburg-Leipzig 1838.

literature

  • Helmut Brall: Tufted beard and naked savior. Violation and healing of the principle of authority in Konrads von Würzburg 'Heinrich von' Kempten '. In: Klaus Matzel, Hans-Gert Roloff (ed.): Festschrift for Herbert Kolb on his 65th birthday. Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1989, pp. 31-52.
  • Rüdiger Brandt: Konrad von Würzburg. Minor epic works. (Classics Readings 2), Berlin 2000.
  • Horst Brunner: Konrad von Würzburg. In: The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author's Lexicon (VL) . Edited by Kurt Ruh and others, 2nd edition Berlin / New York 1985, Volume V, Sp. 272–304; here: col. 293 f.
  • Maria Dobozy: The Old and the New Bund in Konrads von Würzburg 'Heinrich von Kempten'. In: ZfdPh 107, 1988, pp. 386-400.
  • Beate Kellner: The knight and sheer violence. Role designs in Konrad von Würzburg's 'Heinrich von Kempten'. In: Matthias Meyer, Hans-Jochen Schiewer (Hrsg.): Literary life. Role drafts in literature of the High and Late Middle Ages. Festschrift for Volker Mertens on his 65th birthday. Tübingen 2002, pp. 361-384.
  • Beate Kellner: On the coding of violence in medieval literature using the example of Konrads von Würzburg 'Heinrich von Kempten'. In: Wolfgang Braungart , u. a. (Ed.): Perceiving and acting. Perspectives of a literary anthropology. Bielefeld 2004 (Bielefelder Schriften zu Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft 20), pp. 75–103.
  • Otto Neudeck: Telling of Emperor Otto. For the fictionalization of history in Middle High German literature. Cologne u. a. 2003.
  • André Schnyder: Observations and reflections on the 'Heinrich von Kempten' Konrad von Würzburg. In: Yearbook of the Oswald von Wolkenstein Society 5. 1989, pp. 273–83.
  • Birgit Zacke: Grab the opportunity: on causes and solutions to conflicts in Konrad von Würzburg's "Heinrich von Kempten". In: Hans-Dieter Heimann (Ed.): World views of medieval people. Berlin 2007, pp. 191-208.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ s. Konrad von Würzburg: 'Heinrich von Kempten' . Manuscript census.
  2. ↑ See Rüdiger Brandt: Konrad von Würzburg. Minor epic works. (Klassiker-Lektüren 2), Berlin 2000, pp. 90ff.
  3. ^ Rüdiger Brandt: Konrad von Würzburg. Minor epic works. (Klassiker-Lektüren 2), Berlin 2000, p. 93ff.
  4. ↑ See Helmut Brall: Ruffed beard and naked savior. Violation and healing of the principle of authority in Konrads von Würzburg 'Heinrich von' Kempten '. In: Klaus Matzel, Hans-Gert Roloff (ed.): Festschrift for Herbert Kolb on his 65th birthday. Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1989, pp. 31-52.
  5. ^ Rüdiger Brandt: Konrad von Würzburg. Minor epic works. (Klassiker-Lektüren 2), Berlin 2000, p. 94ff.
  6. ↑ Beate Kellner: The knight and sheer violence. Role designs in Konrad von Würzburg's 'Heinrich von Kempten'. In: Matthias Meyer, Hans-Jochen Schiewer (Hrsg.): Literary life. Role drafts in literature of the High and Late Middle Ages. Festschrift for Volker Mertens on his 65th birthday. Tübingen 2002, p. 94.
  7. ↑ See Beate Kellner: The knight and sheer violence. Role designs in Konrad von Würzburg's 'Heinrich von Kempten'. In: Matthias Meyer, Hans-Jochen Schiewer (Hrsg.): Literary life. Role drafts in literature of the High and Late Middle Ages. Festschrift for Volker Mertens on his 65th birthday. Tübingen 2002, p. 78f.
  8. ↑ Beate Kellner: The knight and sheer violence. Role designs in Konrad von Würzburg's 'Heinrich von Kempten'. In: Matthias Meyer, Hans-Jochen Schiewer (Hrsg.): Literary life. Role drafts in literature of the High and Late Middle Ages. Festschrift for Volker Mertens on his 65th birthday. Tübingen 2002, p. 101.