Marriage marriage
The motif of mahrtehehe describes the erotic-sexually motivated love relationship or marriage of a mostly male person with a mostly female supernatural being, the duration of which is linked to the observance of a prohibition or taboo . Linguistically, the name Mahrtenehe is derived from the name for a nocturnal pressure spirit: the Alp, referred to in the Low German language area as Mahr or Mahrt .
term
The Mahrte or simply Mar is derived either from the Middle High German word maere (" Mär , Märchen ") and refers to the marriage with a mythical creature. But it could also be an old word for a supernatural being in human or human-like form. The word can be found again in the English nightmare and in the old German Nachtmahr (outdated term for " nightmare "). The technical term Mahrtenehe , however, goes back to the Germanist Friedrich Panzer (1870-1956), who took up the word Mahrte as a common Germanic term for demonic dream appearances in nightmares and thus the fairy tale type of the disturbed Mahrtenehe towards the end of the 19th century to Albrecht von Scharfenberg's Seifried developed by Ardemont .
Melusin saga
and were blessed by the bishop in the bed "
High German:
"How Reymont and Melusina were engaged /
And were blessed by the bishop in their wedding bed "
(satirical woodcut from the book Schöne Melusine , Johann Bämler , 1474)
The most famous story of this type is the Melusin saga - the story of a fairy who marries a poor knight, fathered numerous sons with him and built castles, cities and monasteries with her legendary wealth from otherworldly sources. She is the mighty ancestor of the historically very important family of the Lusignan from Poitou in southwest France. The marriage is successful and characterized by great love - only the knight is never allowed to visit his wife Melusine on Saturdays. He does so one day and sees how her abdomen turns into the tail of a tatzelwurm (the abdomen of a snake) in the bath . After the husband publicly states this, they have to separate - Melusine flies out the window, transforms into a winged snake and only comes at night to nurse her young children. The Lusignans have Melusine in their coat of arms.
Further literary examples are the person of Laudine for Yvain / Iwein by Chrétien de Troyes or Hartmann von Aue as well as the figure of Meliur in Partonopier and Meliur by Konrad von Würzburg (13th century) and also Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1811 ).
literature
- Claude Lecouteux: The motive of the disturbed marriage marriage as a reflection of the human psyche. In: Jürgen Janning u. a. (Ed.): From the image of man in fairy tales. Röth, Kassel 1980, pp. 59-71.
- Volker Mertens: The German Arthurian novel. 1998/2005, p. 72.
- Janin Pisarek: More than just the love of the water spirit. The motif of the 'disturbed marriages' in European folk tales. In: fairytale mirror. Journal for international fairy tale research and fairy tale care. Volume 27, Issue 1 /, 2016, pp. 3–8.
- Armin Schulz: Splitting phantasms - telling about the »disturbed marriage«. In: Wolfram Studies. Volume 18, 2004, pp. 233-262.
- Armin Schulz: Poetics of the Hybrid - Scheme, Variation and Intertextual Combinatorics in the Minne- and Aventiureepik: Willehalm von Orlens - Partonopier and Meliur - Wilhelm von Austria - The beautiful Magelone. Berlin 2000, pp. 88-90.
- Wei Tang: Mahrtenehen in Western European and Chinese Literature. Wurzburg 2009.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Janin Pisarek: More than just the love of the water spirit. The motif of the 'disturbed marriages' in European folk tales. In: fairytale mirror. Journal for international fairy tale research and fairy tale care. Volume 27, Issue 1, 2016, pp. 3–8, here p. 3.
- ↑ Christoph Huber: Mythical narration. Narration and rationalization in the scheme of the 'disturbed marriage marriage'. In: Udo Friedrich: Presence of the Myth. Configurations of a way of thinking in the Middle Ages and early modern times. Berlin, New York 2004, pp. 247–274, here p. 248.