Rudolf von Rotenburg

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Rudolf von Rotenburg
Codex Manesse
Cod. Pal. germ. 848 fol. 54r, around 1305/40

Rudolf von Rotenburg was a poet and minstrel of the Middle Ages in the first half of the 13th century who wrote his works in Middle High German . Along with Walther von der Vogelweide , Otto von Botenlauben , Reinmar von Zweter , Ulrich von Liechtenstein , Ulrich von Winterstetten , Tannhäuser , Konrad von Würzburg , Der Wilde Alexander, Hadlaub and Frauenlob, Rudolf von Rotenburg is one of the most important authors of the Leich genre . In addition to his Minne Leichs some are Minnelieder Rudolf handed.

Dating, origin and tradition

According to linguistic findings and tradition, Rudolf's corpses and songs are dated to the first half of the 13th century. The language of his work is characterized by the Alemannic dialect .

Origin of the author

The position of the work in the Heidelberg song manuscript could indicate that it is a Swiss minstrel. It is not certain that this is identical to Rudolfus de Rotenburc , who is mentioned in a Lucerne document dated March 24, 1257. In the case of identity, Rudolf does not belong to the family of the Bailiffs von Rotenburg, as is assumed in the Budapest song manuscript, but to the ministerial family of the same name, which is related to the Lords von Meggen von Rotenburg.

Lore

In the Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (C) , six corpses and 41 song stanzas by Rudolf von Rotenburg have survived. They follow after the author portrait of Rudolf von Rotenburg (Folio 54r) on the following pages 54v-59r. Further parallel traditions of Rudolf's works, albeit much smaller in scope than in C, can be found in the Small Heidelberg Song Manuscript (A) and the Budapest Song Manuscript . The tradition does not give any clear clues to date the work or the author more precisely. The only reference to the poet, a Lucerne document dated March 24, 1257, contradicts the information in the Budapest song manuscript, in which Rudolf is referred to as Vogt. The Budapest manuscript contains no corpse of Rudolf, but only a few of his stanzas. Additional confusion regarding the author arises from the fourth corpse, which is entered twice in C, once under Rudolf von Rotenburg and once under Niune . This fourth corpse is also included under Niune in the Kleiner Heidelberger Liederhandschrift.

Author portrait in Codex Manesse

The texts of the corpses and songs of Rudolf von Rotenburg in the Codex Manesse are preceded by a so-called author portrait. The miniature on page 54r of the Great Heidelberg Song Manuscript shows the poet with a sword, the attribute of the knight. With his hands raised he receives a wreath from the hands of a lady bending down from the battlements. The harnessed horse, equipped with a shield and a standard, indicates that the poet wants to go on a journey and that it is a farewell scene. The shield and standard show a two-towered red castle on a golden background. This symbolism and coloring can be found both in the coat of arms of the bailiffs of Rotenburg as well as in the coat of arms of the barons of Wollhusen.

Mention of Rudolf by other poets

The Swiss minstrel von Gliers praises Rudolf among other deceased corpse authors.

Works

The works of Rudolf are printed in the authoritative text edition German song poets of the 13th century by Carl von Kraus under 49. Ruodolf von Rotenburg, briefly referred to as KLD 49. After the corpses I to VI, the songs are numbered from VII to XVII.

Minneleichs

The Middle High German Minneleichdichtung of the 13th century mostly gets by with a few subject areas that can be paraphrased with Minne complaint, women's price and declarations of loyalty. This thematic delimitation offers little incentive for interpretation. The "formal artistry" to always find new variations in the composition of similar language formulas is given over to a clear content structure for most Minneleichs. In his Leich III, however, Rudolf von Rotenburg tried harder to coordinate text groups with regard to form and content. Here the communicative function of language clearly comes to the fore compared to its playful sound form.

The corpses I, II, IV of Rudolf von Rotenburg belong to a category in which the "corpse as a complaint about the negative attitude" is presented, which is also the basic repertoire of most traditional corpses, these corpses can thus be viewed as basic types of the minnow. The thematic structure of the corpses I, II and IV of Rudolf, outlined below, shows that the Minne complaint is clearly in the foreground here.

Corpse I. Corpse II Corpse IV
V. 1-12 Women's award V. 1-15 Complain about the envious V. 1-8 Minne lament
V. 13-34 Declarations of loyalty V. 16-18 Women's award V. 9-27 Declarations of loyalty
V. 35-53 Minne lament V. 19-33 Declarations of loyalty V. 28-38 Minne lament
V. 54-71 Complain about the envious V. 34-48 Projection of the fulfillment of love V. 39-48 Reflecting on the misconduct of society
V. 72-100 Declarations of loyalty V. 49-98 Reflection on the situation of love V. 49-64 Reflection on the situation of love

The following table of contents of Leich I and Leich III show the difference between the simple structure and concise content in Leich I and the structurally much more finely structured text in Leich III, which is much more demanding in terms of content.

Content Leich I:

Women's Prize (vv. 1–12)

The lyrical ego only wants to serve its lady faithfully and consistently - with triuwen and staete . The beauty and uniqueness of the lady is emphasized, no living person has ever seen such a beautiful child: Still no one found one who speaks / saw a kint daz lived wol sô beautiful.

Declarations of loyalty (v. 13–34)

The envy of others cannot harm the self, if the lady only allows him to serve her forever: What do I care if I have the nice goodness / that I have ir diende zaller zit sô vil then I buy? Courtly custom, the ladies give those their minne to them with staetem muote serve so with a firm and steady will; the ego also conforms to this. His joyfully elevated mood, his higher muot , results from his thoughts constantly revolving around the Lady of Minnie . If the lady has doubts about his service and his loyalty, the ego wants to give her his heart as a pledge and to prove itself to her in the ministry in a lasting, due manner, with staeteclîcher fuoge and âne ir shame .

Lamentation of Minne (v. 35-53)

The nightingale singing to donate the ego consolation, because his heart küniginne makes his life so hard that it left the comfortable road and a difficult journey must tread what with Kumber and worry connected. The ego trusts in its persistence, its staete , but still to be heard - if it does not succeed, it can no longer be happy. The thought of the goodness of the lady brings the ego into a happy mood, but this joy is based solely on the hope of being able to accurately declîchen. This event , in which the ego woos the lady, has already lasted twenty years ; she too should feel annoyance because of his futile efforts.

Lament against the envious (vv. 54-71)

This is followed by the curse of the nîder shar , the natural beauty of the flowers and the heather should not be granted to them. The ego emphasizes that it does not suffer too much from the envious - if it asked for their consideration, they would aggravate it even more. The ego suffers the kumber and haz on the part of the envious without guilt, because on the basis of its entanglement in love it is undertân for its lady without indulging in false hopes.

Declarations of loyalty (v. 72-100)

A gruoz from the lady would make me happy, because that would make it feel valuable and it would hold on to the lady with staete . The ego is astonished that it sôzen kumber lament and nevertheless has an alsô high mood . The reason is that the self hopes for a happy ending, which it wants to strive for all of its life.

Content Leich III:

Women's price and love affair addressed to society (vv. 1–20)

A higher muot inspires the ego to sing this song. This is followed by praise for the beauty and the courtly impeccable behavior of the lady whose heart the self strives for. The ego was the red mouth of love mistress and the brightness of her eyes verwunt , only from their genâden hangs his recovery from, because the lady captures the ego very close to him. The ego sees itself exposed to social envy because the Minneherrin is more important to it than any other woman, but this quarrel would like to take it upon itself. With the joyful ulterior motives of the beautiful body that are lip lady can I endure this agony. Your extraordinary kindness, ir schoener zuht, has beguiled his heart and mind. At your service, I am to be real , I hope, has only gain .

Request for help to the role of women (vv. 21-26)

The lady is praised as the most beautiful of all women, with the request of the ego to perceive his longing.

Prize for women and lamentation of love addressed to the heart of the ego (vv. 27-38)

The ego brings the Lady of Minnie close to its heart because the ego is convinced that she will fill his days with joy. The lament of the ego must not be a burden to the lady. The ego insists that it only ze services ir werdigkeit was born, the lady replies to the ego that it verlorn was, so it is born free. By ir anger will also be herzeleit strengthened. The beauty of the lady, her red mouth and the shine of her eyes rob the ego of its senses and the inner burden takes away its blues .

Request for help to the role of women (vv. 39–44)

The Lady of the Minnie is exalted as the Frouw of all virtuous crowns . This is followed by the pleading plea for the elimination of the love of minnesia and the ego assures the lady before all other beautiful women its heart without ulterior motives, "arge misetât ".

Reflection on the ego's situation of love directed at the role of women (vv. 45-62)

The ego tries to explain its situation to the lady with literary examples: Parzivâl had to suffer kumber unde nôt because of the love, and Meljôth did the same on Cupid's orders. Clîes and a queen indulged in love until death. The ego still stands for the safety of the lady with all the stamina in love service . The ego assumes rich wages through their worthiness and the associated frustration . Lâvîne or Pallás cannot be more beautiful than his lady, who can keep large swaere away from me and yet at the same time cause worry.

Women's prize and lamentation of love addressed to the role of women (vv. 63–68)

Praise to innocence, honor, power and goodness of lady. When the I is with her, it becomes filled with great joy.

Reflection on the ego's situation of love (vv. 69-89)

The sadness of love only happened to the dumb self by looking at the lady, since then the pure saelic wip can no longer forget his whole body longs for her dear red mouth . The exclamation ohei, ohei! Ever since the ego first saw the mistress of love and through whom it suffered a great deal , her laugh filled with love drove it mad . As you can see in the self, the lady can make men foolish , ohei, ohei! Although the ego of the lady with triuwen is taken, she obviously hates it and the ego compares itself to a barkless tree as long as it is not near her, ohei, ohei!

Minne lament addressed to the role of women (vv. 90-95)

The ego assures the lady that she has no doubt about his heart and his gedanc . The lady will not be disturbed by compulsive love , so the ego assures us .

Reflection on the ego's situation of love (vv. 96-103)

The ego suffers kumber because the lady does not hear it and does not believe him that it has not been able to forget her since then.

Women's award and declarations of loyalty addressed to the role of women (vv. 104-109)

The love of the lady surpasses everything in the whole realm, from Pâris to zer sal . The lady, referred to by the I as his salvation , surpasses all other women, only she was chosen by the heart of the ego.

Reflection on the ego's situation of love (vv. 110-117)

The kingdom and all countries are unimportant to the self, everything would be in the hands of Minneherrein, who has tied his heart from the first moment.

Minne lament addressed to the role of women (vv. 118-123)

The reputation of the lady is extremely important to the ego, which must compulsively show love. For their becoming gruoz , the self is completely dedicated to the ministry, but none of it helps.

Women's prize and reflection on the ego's situation of love (vv. 124-136)

The ego describes the beauty of the lady: the face is red and white, cheeks of naturally beautiful color, a minnike mood that seems to constantly urge the ego to kiss, kiss me! Nobody would rather comply with this request than myself, if the lady were only understanding. The ego does not suffer , but it does not suffer from rarely seeing the mistress of love ; it will always show her his love. Owê sighs the ego, how do you get rid of worries without gaining healing or rest?

As the contents of the two corpses have shown, clearly more complex structures and contents can be seen in corpse III compared to corpse I, which can be seen as the basic type of the minneleich. While Leich I only uses the current topoi on women's prices, the Minne complaint and declarations of loyalty, and here Rudolf is on traditional paths, Leich III has some special features: To underpin his Minne complaint, Rudolf uses a number of literary figures such as the title hero from Wolframs von EschenbachParzival ” or Lâvîne and Pallás , who were probably known to the courtly audience of the time. In order to attest to the enormous dimension of his love, Rudolf also uses geographic information in Leich III, such as B. from Pâris unz zer sal , which roughly describes the expansion of the German cultural area from west to east, from Paris to the Saale. Leich III is characterized by some innovations compared to the proven, traditional basic types of Leichs I, II and IV. These innovations give the Minne-Klage and Minne-Reflection significantly more depth and weight, they become more tangible, more tangible and probably also more exciting for the audience at the time.

Minneieder

The ten traditional songs of Rudolf von Rotenburg can be attributed to the successors of Walther von der Vogelweide and Reinmar von Zweter . Like the Walthers, Rudolf's songs contain the joys of court life. Increasing these joys was one of the tasks of the courtly man, especially the poet, while the despondent - also a word used by Walther - did not believe in these joys and therefore could not share them.

Song X, 1st stanza
I wil nû den wolgemuoten sing that
still rehtui fröide gentle tuot:
who should bring the despondent frolice
that one seldom vindet wolgemuot?
wol in the sô schône is minded
daz si fröide minnent
and daz one guoten wîben speaks guot.

In song XIV, instead of joy, Rudolf suggests real pain in love as a motif for this minnie song. A wrong word from the mouth of the beloved lady struck him deeply: sî had spoken to me ûz ir rôtem munde / einz daz broke my heart , as still a lover he takes the blame for the behavior of his beloved lady with the selfless words dane what I ir not worthy of itself. Increasing his selflessness even further, he wants to share the common property unselfishly, that ir sî wol, sô sî mir iemer wê , she is doing well regardless of his pain. You remain his heart, but he has to live with lovesickness until his end: sî hab ir daz heart mîn, / sô belîbet me daz I am in suffering / iemer muoz biz an mîn ende sîn. Rudolph's songs appear in the great tradition of courtly minstrels .

Rudolf's songs are characterized by the stanzas being linked to one another. In song VIII the address of the adored lady is steadily increased at the beginning of the three stanzas: from frouwe to saelic frouwe to mîns heart frouwe . In song XIV, the exclamation ôwê or wê appears in all five stanzas, namely in the first two and last stanzas as the first word, whereby the entire song is phonetically bracketed into one unit. In song XIII, each beginning of the stanza takes up the last word from the last line of the previous stanza and all stanzas of the song are linked to form a unit.

literature

Text output

  • Carl von Kraus: German song writers of the 13th century, volume I text , Tübingen 1978, 49. Ruodolf von Rotenburg (KLD 49).
  • The great Heidelberg song manuscript. In faithful text print, ed. by Fridrich Pfaff , Heidelberg 1909.

Introductory literature

  • Hermann Apfelböck: Tradition and genre awareness in the German Leich , Tübingen 1991.
  • Helmut de Boor: History of German Literature from the Beginnings to the Present. Vol. III / 1. German Literature in the Late Middle Ages 1170-1250. 5th edition revised by Johannes Janotta, Munich 1997.
  • Ingeborg Glier: The Minneleich in the late 13th century . In: work-type-situation. Studies on poetological conditions in older German literature. Festschrift for Hugo Kuhn's 60th birthday, Stuttgart 1969.
  • Harald Haferland: Hohe Minne. For the description of the Minnekanzone , Berlin 2000.
  • Harald Haferland: What do the minstrels' declarations of sincerity mean for the understanding of minstrels? In: Medieval Poetry. Problems of Poetics, ed. by Thomas Cramer and Ingrid Kasten, Berlin 1999.
  • Manfred Kern: Fine drops from the Helikon. On the allusion to ancient mythology in German courtly poetry and epics from 1180-1300 , Amsterdam - Atlanta GA, 1998.
  • Christina Kreibich: The Middle High German Minneleich. A contribution to his content analysis , Würzburg 2000.
  • Hugo Kuhn: Minnesangs Wende, Tübingen 1967.
  • Ursula Kundert: Historical Deconstruction. For a cultural reproduction of philologically precise readings using the example of the Middle High German corpse. In: Files of the XI. International Germanist Congress Paris 2005, Vol. 5, ed. by Jean-Marie Valentin, Bern 2008.
  • Silvia Ranawake: Rudolf von Rotenburg . In: The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author Lexicon . Berlin 1992, Col. 366-369.

Biographical reference works

Web links

Commons : Codex Manesse  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Rudolf von Rotenburg  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e Silvia Ranawake: Rudolf von Rotenburg . In: The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author Lexicon . Berlin 1992, 2nd edition, Col. 366-369.
  2. Ursula Kundert : Historical Deconstruction. For a cultural reproduction of philologically precise readings using the example of the Middle High German corpse. In: Files of the XI. International Germanist Congress Paris 2005, Vol. 5, ed. by Jean-Marie Valentin, Bern 2008, p. 160 f.
  3. Cf. Ingeborg Glier: The Minneleich in the late 13th century . In: work-type-situation. Studies on poetological conditions in older German literature. Festschrift Hugo Kuhn for his 60th birthday. Stuttgart 1969, p. 164 f.
  4. Cf. Christina Kreibich: The Middle High German Minneleich. A contribution to his content analysis , Würzburg 2000, p. 34 ff.
  5. Cf. Christina Kreibich: The Middle High German Minneleich. A contribution to his content analysis , Würzburg 2000, p. 40 ff.
  6. Cf. Christina Kreibich: The Middle High German Minneleich. A contribution to his content analysis , Würzburg 2000, p. 127 ff.
  7. a b Cf. Helmut de Boor: History of German literature from the beginnings to the present. Vol. III / 1. German Literature in the Late Middle Ages 1170-1250. 5th edition. Revised by Johannes Janotta. Munich 1997, p. 273 f.
  8. Carl von Kraus: German song poet of the 13th century, Volume I text , Tübingen 1952, 49. Ruodolf von Rotenburg, songs X. (KLD 49, song 10)
  9. See Helmut de Boor: History of German Literature from the Beginnings to the Present. Vol. III / 1. German Literature in the Late Middle Ages 1170-1250. 5th edition. Revised by Johannes Janotta. Munich 1997, p. 274.