Lohengrin (legendary figure)

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Lohengrin is the main hero of the Middle High German Swan Knight legend from the late 13th century. There he is the son of Parzival , one of the guardians of the Holy Grail , is sent to the Rhine by King Arthur and helps the fictional daughter of the duke Elsa von Brabant against their opponents.

origin of the name

Lohengrin is called Loherangrîn in the Parzival epic by Wolfram von Eschenbach , a short form of Garin le Loherain (Garin, der Lothringer; French Garin le Lorrain ). An adaptation of the 15th century calls the knight Lorengel . In the Brothers Grimm in the saga is The Knight with the Swan of Helias 's speech, the Greek term for "the sun for a related" (ho heliakós). The Middle High German Lohe (flame) is only relevant for the name in the figurative, mythical sense. In the ancient times is Phaethon (also Phaethon) the son of the sun god Helios and has seven sisters, the Heliades. Cycnus , a friend of Phaethon, is transformed into a swan after his tragic death (Greek κύκνος , Latin cygnus ).

Legendary figure

The motif of the swan knight can be traced back to Greek and Roman antiquity. The swan, the constant companion of Lohengrin, is a “phallic symbol animal”: It is no coincidence that Zeus , the father of the gods, fathered children in swan form with an earthly woman (“ Leda and the swan”). There are origins in Tacitus as well as in Icelandic sagas. In the medieval version, Lohengrin fights against Elsa's enemy Telramund in Mainz in the presence of Emperor Heinrich , defeats Elsa, marries Elsa, accompanies the Emperor on his campaign against the Hungarians and fights for the Pope against the Saracens . When he returned to Cologne , Elsa asked him where he came from , despite his prohibition. In vain did he refuse to answer twice; when she asks for the third time, he explains himself, but leaves her and returns with the swan to the grail.

Historical background of the saga

According to Ernst Elster, the medieval epic Lohengrin had two authors, the first only having composed stanzas 31 to 67, everything else can be traced back to a second author, presumably a "Bavarian ministerial". In the French versions of the 12th century, the swan knight Elyas appears as the grandfather of Gottfried von Bouillon and the central plot takes place at the time of Emperor Otto in Nijmegen on the Lower Rhine. Unlike the Bouillon-Boulogne and Brabant houses, the Kleve house with the Schwanenburg and the Geldern and Rieneck houses, which are related to Kleve, had an intensive swan memoria . In addition, other noble houses traced their ancestry back to the swan knight.

literature

  • Ferdinand Gloeckle: Lohengrin, an old German poem, based on a copy of the Vatican manuscript . Published by Joseph von Görres . Heidelberg 1813 [1]
  • Lohengrin to Brabant. Old German poem . In: German legends . Edited by the Brothers Grimm . Vol. 1. No. 542. Berlin: Nicolai 1865.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon , Volume 12. Leipzig 1908, pp. 663–664
  2. ^ Eckhard Roch: Psychodrama. Richard Wagner im Symbol , Stuttgart / Weimar 1995, p. 165
  3. ↑ Ferdinand Gloeckle: Lohengrin, an old German poem, based on a copy of the Vatican manuscript , edited by Joseph von Görres, Heidelberg 1813, p. 73
  4. ^ Ernst Elster: Contributions to the Critique of Lohengrin , Halle 1994, p. 1 ff.