Love
Minne ( mhd. Love) is a specifically medieval conception of mutual social obligation, honorable remembrance and love that shaped the noble feudal culture of the high Middle Ages . The Middle High German word minne has been used as a specialist term in literary history and legal history since the 19th century.
Love in court literature
In the early and high Middle Ages, the term Minne generally referred to positive mental and emotional affection, "friendly remembrance", and was used for the relationship between people and God and for relationships between people in social, charitable, friendly, erotic and sexual terms second hand. Particularly characteristic of the courtly culture of the High Middle Ages was the thematization of one aspect in particular: social interaction and the emotional-erotic relationship between men and women. This side of love, which largely coincides with today's idea of (gender) love, has been a central theme in poetry ( minnesong ) and epic ( courtly novel ) in Germany since 1170 . In this process, Minne was stylized into an ideal of platonic love , which above all meant the inviolable knightly service for a lady, submission to her will and solicitation for her favor (so-called Hohe Minne ). Especially in the 12th to 14th centuries, Minne referred to this "fin'amors" or "amour courtois" ( courtly, noble love ) of the Romanesque knight culture. Ulrich von Liechtenstein's autobiographical story about his service to women gives a humorous, detailed account of the sometimes almost grotesque services that a knight was supposed to perform for his lady. It is controversial whether this ideal, which was cultivated above all in the social art of minstrel singing, also had a meaning for the real life of the knighthood or whether it was more a literary, fictional game.
Word history
The word Minne has undergone a radical change in meaning. If it initially referred to a non-sexual affection, for example in the sense of sibling love or love of God, it soon meant specifically bisexual love. For reasons of distinction, the nobility and clergy only granted each other the ability to love in a civilized manner, and denied this to the lower classes (especially the peasants). So love became more and more a term for the physical, so here a worldly, peasant, instinctual and animal love, as it was thematized in some coarse texts. The older literary studies also referred to this aspect of the concept of love as "lower love". In the late Middle Ages, the meaning of the word love shifted more and more to the sexual aspect, so that the word was not only unsuitable for designating "noble" feelings, but was taboo and was increasingly replaced by the word love until it virtually died out. It has survived today only in the technical term minstrel .
literature
- Benno Bulitta : Love, Wine and Weltenschmerz . 89 songs. G & S Verlag, Zirndorf 2008, ISBN 978-3-925698-86-6 .
- Hermann Reichert : Minne. A lecture. Facultas, Vienna 2020, ISBN 978-3-7089-2022-1 ; E-book: ISBN 978-3-99111-007-1 . Revised version of the lecture first published in 2010 and given since 1986.
