Reynke de vos
Reynke de vos is the most important Low German animal poem in verse . The incunabula , printed in 1498 by Hans van Ghetelen in Lübeck , of which a single complete copy is preserved in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel , helped the story of the clever fox Reineke , originating in the 13th century, to become a tradition in German-speaking countries until today.
The epic tells of the ingenious culprit Reynke, the fox, who secures his food as a malicious and vile liar, saves from precarious situations and in the end prevails against all opponents. The narration is accompanied by glosses in prose .
construction
The animal poem consists of a narrative text of 7791 creasing verses , which are divided into four books of different sizes; the books are in turn divided into 39 (1), 9 (2), 14 (3) and 13 (4) chapters , each of which is introduced by headings and brief contents. The chapters are concluded with more or less detailed prose comments, the so-called glosses . Preliminary speeches in prose introduce the entire text as well as the 3rd and 4th books. There are 89 woodcut illustrations throughout the work , with 23 motifs, some of which are repeated several times.
content
At the beginning, Hinrek van Alckmer , who describes himself as a Scholemeester un Tuchtlerer (schoolmaster and breeding teacher), speaks out in a preface .
1st book
In the first book, Hinrek tells of King Nobel's farm day , the lion, during which the animals complain against the fox Reynke , who is not present , above all Ysegrim , the wolf, whose family the fox is said to have caused great damage. A puppy named Wackerloß claims that the fox stole a sausage from him, corrected by Hyntze , the cat, that the sausage was his. A panther reports how he was able to save Lamps , the rabbit, from Reynke at the last minute, when the latter tried to teach the rabbit the catechism by biting off its head. Grymbart , the badger, a nephew of Reynke's, defends the fox, particularly by being able to refute Ysegrim's complaints. His tactics are thwarted by the appearance of the rooster Hennynck , who shows his headless daughter Krassevoet on the stretcher and reports how Reynke lured the poultry out of the safe chicken yard and ate them under the pretext of piety in a cowl and with a prayer book.
Nobel sends Brun the bear with a summons to Reynke's castle Malepartus . Reynke outwits the bear by tricking him into looking for honey in a tree trunk that had been split and wedged to dry in the farm Rustevyl's farm , and he pulls the wedges so that Brun, hopelessly trapped, almost beaten to death by the villagers hurrying up becomes. The next messenger is Hyntze. Reynke lures him into the pastor's cellar at night with the promise of goodies, where the cat ends up in a noose laid out as a trap and can only save himself, terribly beaten by the residents of the parsonage, under the pastor's nightgown by a desperate bite into his room . Only Grymbart succeeds in getting Reynke to the court; on the way there the fox confesses to him his misdeeds, in which Ysegrim in particular was the stupid.
At court you make short work: Reynke is sentenced to death on the gallows. The delinquent uses the guarantee of a final confession to mention a hidden and stolen treasure, which arouses King Nobel's curiosity and gives the fox a respite for a detailed report on it. Reynke makes up a story in which he makes his own father the thief of the treasure, blackens the badger Grymbart, makes the wolf and bear appear as treason and explains to the king - especially the queen - where the treasure can be found. The two potential regicide Ysegrim and Brun end up in dungeon, and Reynke promises, knowing full well that sooner or later his lie will be discovered, to make a pilgrimage to Rome. Equipped with a satchel , made from the fur and paws of Ysegrim and Brun, he first makes his way to his castle, accompanied by a lamp, the hare, and Bellyn , the ram. In Malepartus he eats the hare, sticks its head in the satchel and sends Bellyn back to the court after he has convinced the ram that he is transporting an important letter to the king, whose authorship he should claim for himself, in order to help Court to make an impression. Nobel is not happy with the content, releases the large animals Ysegrim and Brun from the dungeon at the mediation of the leopard, declares the ram to be outlawed and extends his farm day.
2nd book
The second book begins with complaints about small animals; the rabbit and the crowman, whose wife the fox has eaten away, complain about Reynke. Nobel decides in extreme excitement to wage a campaign against Reynke. Again it is Grymbart who goes to Malepartus, this time to warn Reynke. Reynke decides to go to the courtyard again. He uses the common way there with Grymbart to make detailed confessions of his deeds towards the confessor Dachs, especially his wickedness towards Ysegrim, Brun, Bellyn and Lampe. The two travelers meet the monkey Marten , who, on the way to Rome, promises to work there as Reynke's advocate.
3rd book
After his return to court, with which the third book begins, Reynke apologizes to the crow and rabbit, and wolf and bear see their cause already thwarted. After the monkey Rukenauwe , the wife of Marten , a traveler to Rome , presented to Nobel with the parable of a lindworm who has the right to bread, the lion asks the fox for a conversation, during which Reynke does not deny his actions, but immediately serves up a continuation of his story of lies previously devised under the gallows. He describes the treasure, including a ring whose stone makes it invisible and therefore invincible, a comb that, adorned with ancient goddesses, makes women the most beautiful of all, and a mirror that tells stories, including those of the virtues of Reynke's father, who also casually discredits his opponents, in particular Ysegrim.
4th book
In the 4th book, Wolf and Fuchs appear as direct opponents. According to Reynke's remarks, Nobel is in a gracious mood, which prompts Ysegrim and his wife Ghyremod to now lead Reynke's rape of the she-wolf, who had also lured her into a well and left her sitting in it. The wolf counters Reynke's objections with the challenge of a duel that Nobel allows. The monkey Rukenauwe drives away the worries of the fox, physically inferior to the wolf; on her advice, Reynke has his fur sheared and bare skin oiled before he goes to battle in front of the assembled yard. He escapes the pressure of the strong wolf by scratching his eye, shooting a stream of urine into the wound and throwing sand at it. Taken in the deadly pincers by the wolf, which is frenzied with pain, he pinches his testicles and wins. The audience is enthusiastic, Nobel declares Reynke to be his councilor, and Ysegrim can be nursed back to health.
Glosses
The commentaries accompanying the narrative text throughout , today listed as a so-called Catholic gloss , show a didactic-moralizing intention. Based on the misdeeds and malice of the fox, they repeatedly emphasize the concern for the salvation of the soul and the special ethical principles of communal coexistence. The character of the Fürstenspiegel , which intends to teach the rulers, is tailored to an urban audience. In addition to the class criticism, which is not lacking in the comments, the general human teachings are placed in the foreground; the admonitions of the church, which is sometimes criticized, to obedience or good behavior are worked out for the reader as a mirror of sins .
With the beginning of the second book, in which Reynke appears again at court to defend himself, the focus of the story shifts to the confrontation between the large animals ; here the glosses decrease noticeably in scope and are even missing entirely in some chapters. The repetition structure of the double court day - Reynke is accused again, reappears at court, continues the story of lies from the first time and again has to fear for his life - in the second part the actions of the now consistently courtly appearing staff, the urban reader of a Hanseatic city as Lübeck excludes rather than appearing less offensive. In an epilogue , the editor recommends not reading the comments at all.
Illustrations
The incunabulum from 1498 contained 89 woodcuts, which were also colored for some editions . The presentation indicates that the print should be distributed from the wealthy Lübeck stalls. The series of images was not specially designed for the Lübeck print, but represented recuts from other printed works.
For example, a series of 30 illustrations from the series has been cut from the Dutch original; some come from prints by Magdeburg Aesop (101 fables by an unknown author at the beginning of the 15th century) and 13 woodcuts from Dialogus creaturarum , a collection of fables in dialogue form printed by Johann Snell in Stockholm in 1483. The Mohnkopf- Offizin Hans von Ghetelens could thereby reduce the cost of printing.
The pictures show the pair of lions always in Herrscherornat , however, the animal subjects retain their nature, whose character tried to express the designer in differentiated Schnittschraffuren; for his role as a monk in the hen yard in the first book, however, the fox is put on a cowl. The second part of the plot, beginning in the second book with Reynke's return to Nobel's court, shows an image program with varied content and style, which distinguishes the episodes and fables designed as internal narratives from the acts in which they are integrated.
The monkey's lindworm parable, for example, is illustrated by a cut that is abstract in expression and emphasizes the line. Reynke's detailed description of the comb, ring and mirror includes woodcut vignettes with symbolic representations of these objects
A special form of the Lübeck edition is represented in this context by the so-called Dialogus woodcuts, which introduce the second book as an interlude in the form of a conversation between the animals that glosses over the events. The animal representations are designed in a more minimalist way than in the illustrations of the plot and gain emblematic character through their connection with the text .
template
The story of the sly fox Reynke stands in the tradition of European Tierepik that since the 11th century from the Latin captivi Ecbasis over the Ysengrimus and the French de Roman Renart to the Middle Dutch epic poem Van den vos Reynaerde , built in the 13th century, Had led.
Reynke de vos has a central Dutch template, but this cannot be clearly defined as such. The poem Van den vos Reynaerde (now known as Reynaert I ), which shows clear traces of the French novel de Renart , was revised and expanded in the 14th century in the Central Dutch verse epic of Reynaert's history . This version, expanded to include the doubling of the court day (the so-called Reynaert II ), was edited twice in the incunable period in the Dutch-speaking area: on the one hand in prose (received in two prints: from Gerard Leeu as Historie van reynaert die vos , 1479, and a reprint in Delft , 1485) and on the other hand in verses with chapter introductions, prose comments and illustrations, also from Leeu's Offizin . Only print fragments of this verse processing have survived , the so-called Culemann fragments , which contain 221 verses and remains of glosses and show three woodcuts. Even if the direct origin of the Lübeck Reynke from 1498 cannot be proven beyond doubt from these fragments, they do refer to the submission of a print closely related to this Dutch rhyme incunable.
Due to its linguistic closeness to Low German, the template only experienced marginal changes in the Lübeck print. For example, some small animal names were adapted to the new audience: the little dog Cortoys (from French courtois : courtly , polite ), which originally presented his sausage concerns in French, became a Wackerloß , which now shows the loss of its feed in Low German Sues translation. Other German- speaking names, such as Krassevoet (= Kratzefuß , mndl .: Coppe ) for the headless hen, were reinvented. In contrast to the glossing, however, the constancy of content and form of the Dutch verses Reynaert I and II , which are also made clear in the following prints, is already preserved in the Lübeck edition.
author
Hinrek van Alkmer , who introduces himself in the preface to Reynke de vos from Lübeck , has been its author since the 18th century . The name as well as the details of his person have only survived in this print and could not be clearly confirmed by other documents. Since the 19th century, doubts about the authorship have been expressed and theses have been put forward about other conceivable persons who edited the Dutch template, in particular about Nicolaus Baumann († 1526), secretary at the court of Duke Magnus of Mecklenburg , and about the chronicler and writer Hermann Bote (around 1450-1520); The authorship of the printers Hermann Barkhusen and Hans van Ghetelen was also taken into account. The thesis that Hinrek van Alkmer was also the editor of the Dutch model of the Lübeck incunabula has survived to this day. The view that the author must have been theologically educated led to the assumption that a clergyman from Lübeck wrote and commented on the Reynke .
reception
The extent to which the work was accepted by the Lübeck public is not known; a reprint from 1517 has been preserved. It became just as popular as Eulenspiegel when Ludwig Dietz's Low German text was printed in Rostock in 1539 with the title Reyneke Vosz de olde , with new commentaries, the so-called Protestant gloss , which clearly contained Reformation ideas. Based on the Rostock printing , the work spread to various printing locations in the 16th century. With a translation into High German (1544) and a Latin translation (1579), which Reynke also opened the Scandinavian-speaking area, the work that Martin Luther called a “living contrafacture of court life” became a popular book in the 17th century . Various adaptations of the material that changed the old Reynke made it possible to temporarily forget its Lübeck origin.
In 1711 Friedrich August Hackmann published the Low German Reynke again under the title Reineke de Vos with the Koker . This edition prompted Johann Christoph Gottsched to transcribe the prose, which he published together with the Low German text in 1752 under the title Reineke der Fuchs . Gottsched's work in turn inspired Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , who considered the story to be an “unholy world Bible”, to write a heroic epic in hexameters , Reineke Fuchs . Since the 19th century, the story of the clever fox, defused from an educational point of view, has become a treasure trove for the production of children's and reading books.
With the onset of source research at the end of the 19th century, Reynke de vos from Lübeck gained increasing international importance for the philological development of the material , in particular for the author's question and for the templates . The close connection between the Middle Dutch and Low German text witnesses by Reynaert and Reynke and the related questions about their respective reception have led to Dutch-German scientific collaborations in recent research.
Text witnesses
Lübeck pressure of Reynke de vos of 1498 is only a single full Inkunabel obtained in the Herzog August Library is located in Wolfenbüttel ( Signature 32.14.Poet.); a facsimile appeared in 1976. Incomplete copies are held by the State and University Library Bremen (call number: II b 34) and the State Library of Berlin (call number: Inc. 1478). The Wolfenbüttel copy comprises 242 sheets in quarto format , the page in 22 lines in one column and partly printed with decorative initials , provided with 89 woodcuts, including 38 repetitions, and the printer's stamps of the Mohnkopfoffizin . Sheets 2–26, 31, 40, 75, 76, 99, 106, 107, 129–131, 173, 193, 195 and 231–242 are missing in the Berlin copy, sheets 1, 2, 5–8 are missing in the Bremen copy , 11–14, 17, 18, 130 and 222. The GW number is 12733, the work is recorded in the Incunabula short title catalog (ISTC) under the number ir00136400.
The Wolfenbüttel incunabula was on view from October 28 to November 24, 1998 in Münster as part of an exhibition entitled Die unheilige Weltbibel - Der Lübeck Reynke de Vos (1498–1998) , organized by the Low German Department of the German Department of Christian -Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and the University and State Library of Münster had been designed with the aim of illustrating the history of transmission and impact of the incunable.
Digitization by the Herzog August Library does not yet exist.
expenditure
- Friedrich August Hackmann : Reynke de Vos with the Koker . Wolfenbüttel, 1711
- August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben : Reineke Vos. Based on the Lübeck edition of 1498 . Breslau, 1834; Reprint 1852 (without glosses) (online)
- August Lübben: Reinke de Vos. According to the oldest edition (Lübeck 1498) . Oldenburg 1867 (online)
- Karl Schröder: Reinke de Vos. Leipzig 1872
- Friedrich Prien: Reinke de Vos . Hall, 1887; New editions: Albert Leitzmann , with an introduction by Karl Voretsch, 1887; W. Steinberg (introduction), 1960
- Timothy Sodmann: Reynke de vos Lübeck 1498 . Facsimile of the Wolfenbüttel incunable. Hamburg 1976
- Jan Goossens: Reynaert's history - Reynke de Vos . (Parallel edition of texts) Darmstadt, 1983
literature
- Reineke Fuchs: the Low German epic "Reynke de vos" from 1498. Transfer and epilogue by Karl Langosch . Reclam, Stuttgart 1967, reprint 1994, ISBN 3-15-008768-6 .
- Klaus Düwel: Reynke de Vos . In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales Vol. 11. Berlin / New York 2004; Sp. 490-493.
- Amand Berteloot / Loek Geeraedts (eds.): Reynke de Vos - Lübeck 1498. On the history and reception of a German-Dutch bestseller . Münster: Lit 1998 (Netherlands Studies, Kleiner Schriften 5), ISBN 3-8258-3891-9 .
- Jan Goossens : Reynke, Reynaert and the European animal pos. Collected Essays. Netherlands - Studies Volume 20. Münster / New York / Munich / Berlin 1998 Netherlands Studies Volume 20. (Online, incomplete)
- Jan Goossens: Reynke de Vos . In: The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author's Lexicon (VL) Vol. 8. Berlin / New York, 1992; Col. 12-20
- Hartmut Kokott: Reynke de Vos . Fink, Munich 1981 (text and history, model analyzes on German literature 4), ISBN 3-7705-1944-2 .
- Hubertus Menke / Ulrich Weber (ed.): The unholy world Bible: the Lübeck Reynke de Vos (1498–1998) . Exhibition by the department for Low German language and literature at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in cooperation with the library of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck and the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel. Kiel: Dept. for Niederdt. Language and literature at Christian Albrechts University 1998
- Michael Schilling: potentiated narration. On narrative poetics and the text functions of the glossator and narrator in “Reynke de vos” . In: Situations of Narration: Aspects of Narrative Practice in the Middle Ages . Edited by Ludger Lieb and Stephan Müller. Walter de Gruyter: Berlin / New York 2002, ISBN 978-3-11-017467-0 , pp. 191-216. ( Online, incomplete )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Goossens VL Vol. 8 (1992) Col. 13
- ↑ Düwel, Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales Vol. 11 (2004); Sp. 492
- ↑ Schilling: potentiated narration . (2002); P. 215
- ^ W. Günter Rohr: On the reception of the "Reynke de Vos" . In: Berteloot et al. (1998), pp. 103-125; P. 104
- ↑ 'Magdeburg Aesop'. In: Author's Lexicon . Volume V, Col. 1125 ff.
- ↑ Jan Goossens : The author of the "Reynke de Vos". A poet profile . In: Berteloot et al. (1998), pp. 45-79; P. 53
- ↑ For the "manipulative techniques of storytelling" including the illustrations see Michael Schilling: Potentiated storytelling. On narrative poetics and the text functions of the glossator and narrator in “Reynke de vos” . In: Situations of Narration: Aspects of Narrative Practice in the Middle Ages . Edited by Ludger Lieb and Stephan Müller. Walter de Gruyter: Berlin / New York 2002; Pp. 191-216; Page 198 ff. For the illustrations, see Raimund Vedder: The illustrations in the early prints of Reynke de Vos . In: Reynaert Reynard Reynke . Studies of a medieval animal pose. Edited by Jan Goossens and Timothy Sodmann. Cologne, Vienna 1980. pp. 196--248 with ill. (= Low German Studies. Vol. 27)
- ^ Cambridge Fragments , Cambridge, UB, Inc. 4 F 6.2 (3367)
- ↑ Goossens VL Vol. 8 (1992) Col. 15
- ↑ Jan Goossens: The author of the "Reynke de Vos". A poet profile . In: Berteloot et al. (1998), pp. 45-79; Pp. 45-52. See also the keystones in the Katharinenkirche in Lübeck [1]
- ^ After Goosens (1992), Berteloot / Geeraedts (1998) and a.
- ^ W. Günter Rohr: On the reception of the "Reynke de Vos" . In: Berteloot et al. (1998), pp. 103-125
- ↑ Amand Berteloot / Loek Geeraedts (eds.): Reynke de Vos - Lübeck 1498. On the history and reception of a German-Dutch bestseller . Münster: Lit 1998 (Netherlands Studies, Kleiner Schriften 5)
- ↑ Digitalisat the Berlin State Library
- ↑ ISTC title recording
Web links
- Reynaert in St. Katharinen (Lübeck)
- wikisource.org : Reynke de Vos ( source ( Memento from April 25, 2006 in the Internet Archive ): when calling up the individual pages, black and white scans ( Memento from July 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) of the incunable 1498 can be called up)
- Reynke de vos in the complete catalog of incandescent prints (GW number GW12733)
- Entry in the Incunabula Short Title Catalog
- Digitization of the Berlin fragments
