Reinmar the old man
Reinmar the Old , also Reinmar von Hagenau , German minstrel of the second half of the 12th century. His person is not documented, but Minnelieder, day song reflections, women's songs and the so-called “widow's complaint” have been handed down under his name in various song manuscripts. Reinmar's minnesongs are regarded as outstanding examples of high minnesong both in terms of content and form .
The life of Reinmar the old man
Reinmar the Old is not documented as a person. Its existence is only attested by mentions by contemporary poets and in the headings in the song collections. His lifetime can be traced back to the fact that Walther von der Vogelweide wrote a two-trophy 'lament for the dead' in which he mentions Reinmar's name ( Reimar ), but without a nickname or name of origin. In his Tristan , written before 1215, Gottfried von Strasbourg names the 'Nachtigall von Hagenau' the greatest German poet during his lifetime; but now, after his recent death, "the nightingale of the bird pasture", so Walther, is the largest. As the greatest lyric poet around 1200 Gottfried could not have described anyone other than Reinmar; Doubts whether the “Nightingale of Hagenau” actually meant Reinmar are therefore not justified. The parallel: "The nightingale of the bird pasture" = "Walther of the bird pasture" requires the addition of "The nightingale of Hagenau" for Reinmar to "Reinmar von Hagenau". This passage of Tristan was probably made around 1210; Reinmar therefore had the original name 'von Hagenau' and died around 1205–1210. On the other hand, he could only have received the nickname “The Old One” long after his death in order to distinguish him from the Reinmares of the 13th century. Therefore, many researchers prefer the form of the name "Reinmar von Hagenau".
Reinmar was most likely a professional singer because he is mentioned in many catalogs of poets and manuscripts, and a large number of songs have come down to us under his name. The Babenberger Hof under Leopold V is often the place of activity in Reinmar . called in Vienna because a death lament put in the widow's mouth for a herre luitpold has been handed down under Reinmar's name, which cannot be related to anyone other than Leopold V. The opinion, which proves that Reinmar was engaged as a court singer in Vienna, has been asked by Schweikle into question because in this song and the beginning of summer speech Leopold V . died on New Year's Eve 1194/1195. One might expect a lament from a poet who was written closer to the death of his master; Schweikle thinks that Reinmar might have stopped by in Vienna a few months later and wrote the "widow's complaint" on the occasion. Other researchers can well imagine that there was a major memorial service only a few months later, as Leopold V was threatened with excommunication at the time of his death and his heirs had to promise to save Leopold's soul, which cashed in for the release of Richard the Lionheart Repay money. The "widow's complaint" has the gesture of an official mourning poem; one will assume it is more likely that its author had closer contact with the Viennese court than that it would have been commissioned from someone who happened to be passing through. Schweikle also questions that the so-called "feud" between Reimar and Walther von der Vogelweide could only be imagined if both had worked side by side at the same farm for a long time. However, the two singers refer to each other in several songs; Above all, Walther wrote a polemical parody of Reinmar and later pointed out serious personal differences in his obituary for Reinmar, despite the high esteem of the deceased's art. Several of Walther's allusions can only be understood by the audience if they have recently heard the Reinmar song in question in their ears. Because there are songs in which Walther mourns his time at the Viennese court, research has long assumed that he was ousted from there by someone else. In terms of time, Reinmar would only be considered if he was really at the Viennese court. But such an assumption is unnecessary; Walther himself cites the death of Duke Friedrich I as the reason for his change of duty from Vienna to the Stauferhof , it is completely sufficient that Walther is informed by his successor, Leopold VI. , was not engaged further. The relationship between Walther and Leopold was still not free of tension; So you don't have to blame Reinmar for Walther's apparently involuntary departure from Vienna. A teacher-student relationship between the two was also derived from the feuds. Objectively, one can only deduce from these, however, that both poets knew each other's works, adapted them in their songs and took sharp polemical opposing positions. In addition, some songs written by Walther in Reinmar's style give the impression of being Walther's childhood poems for stylistic reasons. Any further theory about the personal relationship of singers to one another is speculative.
From Gottfried's statement "von Hagenau" it was concluded that Reinmar came from Hagenau in Alsace. Since there is more than one place called 'Hagenau', this assumption is not certain. However, it is still considered likely because Gottfried could not expect his audience in Strasbourg (only 30 km from Hagenau) to know about a place of the same name in Upper Austria and Hagenau in Alsace grew into an important city during Reinmar's lifetime thanks to its imperial palace . The theme and form of Reinmar's songs, based on French poetry, would also fit in with an origin close to the German-French language border. The large presence of Reinmar in the West German song manuscripts would also speak for Reinmar's sphere of activity in Alsace. A preference of the Babenbergerhof in Vienna for Frenchizing culture might well be possible (Frenchizing fashion was satirized in Vienna, albeit a generation later, by the poet Tannhäuser). Reinmar's family membership of the von Hagenau ministerial family is rather unlikely. In this case, Reinmar would certainly have historical evidence, for example as a witness on documents. The thesis that Reinmar the Old was the father of Reinmar von Zweter is considered refuted .
The various legends about Reinmar's person were favored by the lack of concrete historical clues.
Lore
Reinmar is represented in all three basic manuscripts , the Kleiner Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (A), the Weingartner Liederhandschrift (B) and the Codex Manesse (C). In the Würzburger Liederhandschrift (E) there is also a further collection of Reinmar and Walther songs. Thus, Reinmar is one of the most traditional singers along with Walther and Neidhart . There are a total of 88 different tones that bear Reinmar's name.
In A there are 19 songs with a total of 70 stanzas, in B there are 115 stanzas, but only 28 of them with Reinmar's name, the remaining 87 are unnamed. E offers 30 songs with 141 stanzas, in C 64 songs with 262 stanzas were compiled for Reinmar. There are also individual songs, so-called litter traditions, in smaller manuscripts and fragments. However, there are also double ascriptions, i.e. songs that are ascribed not only to Reinmar but also to other singers in the manuscripts. This means that Reinmar's entire oeuvre cannot be clearly delineated.
Reinmar in research
The research story about Reinmar the Elder is strongly influenced by the question of the authenticity of his songs. This means that there has been and is much discussion about which songs can be assigned to him and which cannot. The authenticity of only 119 stanzas that have survived under his name has not been questioned in the course of the history of research. That's only a quarter of all songs. The starting point for this discussion is primarily the type of transmission of medieval texts. These are in handwritten form, have often been copied and often collected by collectors who were not contemporaries of the singers. Various variations of the same songs in different handwritings and double assignments are evidence of this. Authenticity research has now tried to develop methods with the help of which one can clearly assign or deny affected songs or even individual lines to a singer. In Reinmar's songs these methods were partly developed, partly applied, both on a larger scale. Over time, two types of Reinmar images developed in research: one narrow and one wide. Both depend very much on which songs are awarded to Reinmar and which are not, and also on how the handwritten transmission of the songs is assessed. The wide Reinmar picture is the younger of the two and has not yet completely replaced the narrow one. Reinmar research begins at the beginning of the 19th century. The manuscripts are flawed; Back then, people were optimistic that they would be able to correctly identify and correct these errors, such as variations in the sequence of stanzas. In addition, one wanted to trace the life and work of medieval singers, so that research was strongly influenced by finding biographical information about the individual singers. These biographies were derived from the content of their songs by equating the 'I' of the 'singer', a literary figure, with the poet.
The narrow Reinmar picture emerged from these assumptions and methods. This was first shaped by Ludwig Uhland when he compared Reinmar with Walther in 1822 and thus for the first time provided an, albeit indirect, picture of Reinmar. With the quote attributed to him that Reinmar is the “scholastic of unhappy love”, he narrowly delimits Reinmar's poetry stylistically. He also developed the thesis of the feud with Walther, which arose from a personal enmity between the two. Researchers who followed him, such as Wilhelm Scherer , Erich Schmidt and Konrad Burdach , drew a picture of Reinmar as a colorless melancholic whose work could not keep up with Walthers'. The oeuvre Reinmar the Old was presented as a homogeneous, dominated by abstract monotony. All the songs ascribed to him in the manuscripts that did not fit into this pattern were revoked. Up until the 1960s, the 20th century was also shaped by a narrow image of Reinmar, significantly influenced by the work of Carl von Kraus in 1919. Kraus only considers 35 of the songs that have come down to us under the name of Reinmar to be genuine. He also assumes that 31 of these songs belong to a song cycle linked in terms of content and form . Although criticized at the time, this thesis was strengthened when in the 1940 edition of “Des Minnesangs Frühling” only the songs that Kraus found to be 'genuine' were printed under Reinmar's name.
The image of Reinmar as Walther's personal enemy, an enmity that found expression in the so-called feudal songs of both artists and the idea that Reinmar only sang of unfulfilled love in abstract form, shaped research until 1966, when Friedrich Maurer Kraus' Theses doubted. However, he did not give up the cycle theory, but merely expanded the accepted cycle to 61 songs, which he awarded Reinmar. It was not until 1969 that Günther Schweikle asked for Reinmar's picture to be completely reworked. From this point on, there were efforts within Medieval Studies to trust the manuscripts more and to recognize that variations that occurred in them could also be due to the medieval appearance. It was now considered quite possible that deviations, such as the order of the stanzas, were actually sung variants of these songs. In addition, the image of the medieval professional singer changed, who had to have a wide repertoire of songs in order to get into position. With this, the idea of an artistic character who pervaded a homogeneous work was strongly questioned and instead demanded that the singers are very variable in their work. This made it unlikely that Reinmar should have written in only one particular style. The thesis of Reinmar's feud with Walther was also significantly toned down; however, it cannot be completely denied. The tendency is to look for a new Reinmar picture that can be derived from the manuscripts and shows a versatile artist. In the current edition of “Des Minnesangs Frühling” this requirement has been enforced insofar as 60 songs are now printed under the name “Reinmar der Alte” and another 18 under the name “Pseudo-Reinmar”, which is supposed to indicate that these have been handed down under Reinmar's name, but have not yet been recognized by research as Reinmar's works.
style
Reinmar der Alte is one of the representatives of the heyday of minstrels . Formally, this phase is characterized by multi-stanza songs in the form of a tunnel with differentiated rhyme schemes, in which pure rhyme is increasingly preferred.
These features can be found throughout the Reinmar plant. Content is in a large number of songs Reinmar to Minnelieder . He is considered a singer of suffering, a poet of thought, whose subject is unsuccessful communication. Reinmar aesthetizes pain and elevates suffering to a virtue. It is noticeable that the woman is often not described in detail and thus becomes more of a projection screen for painful ideas of the singer, the 'I' of the song. The basis of this poetry is the field of tension in which love takes place: The man loves the purity of what he loves and wants his love to be fulfilled. If this did happen, however, the woman would lose her purity. Reinmar leads this aporia to artistic perfection. He states that his greatest pride is to be the master of "beautiful mourning"; the singer's pain is sublimated into a beautiful form that brings joy to the audience. His work is the climax, if not the turning point, of this form of Hohe Minne . Due to the most varied of views on the size of Reinmar's oeuvre , no uniform author's image has emerged in the course of research history. Until recently, Reinmar was held solely responsible for works that correspond to the image shown by the thought poet. Meanwhile, however, he is also trusted to do a more multifaceted work. The songs that have been denied him are discussed again. Especially when looking at the stanzas in the Würzburg song manuscript handed down under his name, it becomes clear that Reinmar was also trusted to address positive emotions in his songs; there are also songs with coarse language or natural motifs, which Reinmar had previously excluded from research were. However, there is some evidence that Reinmar the old man had a very colorful and large register of poetic resources that he knew how to use.
An example: Reinmar's so-called 'price song'
MF 165, 10: Swaz I say nû niuwer maere . This song was so famous that Walther von der Vogelweide quotes and adds the beginning of the 3rd verse ( Sô wol dir, wîp, like pure one nam ) in his obituary for Reinmar , and even if Reinmar had only composed this one song, everyone would have to Women pray for his soul. It was given the name 'Preislied', which is common today, because of the exuberant women 's prize in the third stanza, which his opponent Walther admired.
|
Swaz I nû niuwer mære say, |
Nobody is allowed |
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The high-spirited tattered me, |
The proud accuse me of |
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So go on, wîp, how pure a nam! |
Good for you, woman, what a pure 'name'! |
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I have two dinc as a guide, |
I have brought two things before my eyes, |
|
Whether I nu tuon and hân done |
literature
- Carl von Kraus: The Minnesang's Spring. Investigations. Leipzig 1939. Published by Hugo Moser and Helmut Tervooren (= Minnesang's Spring, Vol. III, 1).
- The spring of minstrels. Volume III / 2: Comments. Remarks. After Karl Lachmann, Moritz Haupt and Friedrich Vogt. Revised by Carl von Kraus. 30th edition, Zurich 1950. Accessed by register and supplemented by a literature key, edited by Helmut Tervooren and Hugo Moser 1981.
- Killy, Walther (Hg): Literature Lexicon . Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh 1992, ISBN 3-570-03712-6
- Schweikle, Günther: Minnesang . Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1995, ISBN 978-3-476-12244-5
- Schweikle, Günther: The feud between Walther von der Vogelweide and Reinmar the old. An example of Germanic legends. In: ZfdA 115 (1986), pp. 235-253. ISSN 1619-6627
- Rupp, Heinz; Lang C. L. (Ed.): German Literature Lexicon. Biographical-bibliographical manual, Volume 12: Plachetka-Rilke , Francke Verlag, Bern / Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-317-01647-7
- Schweikle, Günther (Ed.): Reinmar. Songs. Based on the Weingartner song manuscript (B). Middle High German / New High German , Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-15-008318-4
- Tervooren, Helmut: Reinmar studies. A commentary on the “fake” songs of Reinmar des Alten , S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-7776-0480-1
- Stange, Manfred: Research criticism and considerations for a new understanding of Reinmar the Elder. Alten, Series: Amsterdam Publications on Language and Literature (32nd volume), Rodopi, Amsterdam 1977, ISBN 90-6203-140-4
- Hausmann, Albrecht: Reinmar the old as an author: Investigations into tradition and programmatic identity , Francke Verlag, Tübingen / Basel 1999, ISBN 3-7720-2031-3
- Bauschke, Ricarda: Reflections of the so-called Reinmar-Walther “feud” in the Würzburg manuscript E. In: Brunner, H. (Hg): Würzburg, the Great Lion Court and the German Literature of the Late Middle Ages , Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden 2004, S227 -250, ISBN 3-89500-318-2
- Moser, Hugo, Tervooren, Helmut: The Minnesang's Spring. II Editing principles, melodies, manuscripts, explanations . S. Hirzel-Verlag, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-7776-0331-7
- Moser, Hugo, Tervooren, Helmut: The Minnesang's Spring. I texts . S. Hirzel-Verlag, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-7776-0448-8
- Schmaltz, Wiebke: Contributions to the poetic technique of Reinmar the old . Diss. Cologne, 1975. 258 pages.
further reading
- Horst Brunner (ed.): The house book of Michael de Leone (Würzburg song manuscript) of the Munich University Library (2 ° Cod. Ms. 731). Kümmerle Verlag, Göppingen 1983, ISBN 3-87452-548-1
- Carl von Kraus: The songs of Reinmar the old . Vol. 1 and 2, Munich 1919.
- Ulrich Müller: The songs of Reinmar and Walthers von der Vogelweide from the Würzburg manuscript 2 ° Cod. Ms. 731 of the Munich University Library . I. facsimile. With an introduction by Gisela Kornrumpf . Wiesbaden 1972, ISBN 978-3-920153-12-4
- Helmut Tervooren: Reinmar studies . Stuttgart 1991.
- Helmut Tervooren: Reinmar the old man. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 377 f. ( Digitized version ).
Web links
- Reinmar in the Codex Manesse
- Literature by and about Reinmar der Alte in the catalog of the German National Library
- A few Minne songs from Reinmar
Individual evidence
- ↑ L 82.24; L 83.1. See Walther (von der Vogelweide): Leich, Lieder, Sangsprüche, 14th, completely reworked. Ed. Of the Karl Lachmanns edition / with contributions by Thomas Bein and Horst Brunner, ed. Christoph Cormeau, Berlin 1996, p: 181-182. ISBN 3-11-014821-8
- ^ Gottfried von Straßburg, Tristan, V. 4779ff.
- ↑ MF 167, 31, Moser, Hugo, Tervooren, Helmut: Des Minnesangs Frühling . I texts . S. Hirzel-Verlag, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-7776-0448-8 .
- ^ Günther Schweikle: Was Reinmar 'von Hagenau' court singer in Vienna? In: Design history and social history. Festschr. for F. Martini, ed. H. Kreuzer - K. Hamburger. Stuttgart 1969.
- ↑ z. B. L 84.10
- ↑ Discussion of the research opinions on the Walther Reinmar feud in: Hermann Reichert: Walther: Schaf im Wolfspelz oder Wolf im Schafspelz? In: The eight hundred year old fur skirt. Walther von der Vogelweide - Wolfger von Erla - Zeiselmauer. Eds. Helmut Birkhan and Ann Cotten, Vienna 2005, pp. 449–506. ISBN 3-7001-3467-3
- ↑ This is the "Leopoldston, First Thuringian Tone, Second Atzeton", to be found in the latest Walter edition under number 55 (Book III). See Walther (von der Vogelweide): Leich, Lieder, Sangsprüche, 14th, completely reworked. Ed. Of the Karl Lachmanns edition / with contributions by Thomas Bein and Horst Brunner, ed. Christoph Cormeau, Berlin 1996, p: 181-182. ISBN 3-11-014821-8
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Reinmar the old man |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Reinmar von Hagenau |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | minstrel |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 12th Century |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | unsure: Alsace |
| DATE OF DEATH | before 1210 |
| Place of death | Vienna |