Singers' war on the Wartburg
The Wartburg War or Singers' War on the Wartburg is a collection of Middle High German singing poems from the 13th century that has grown gradually around an alleged poetry contest on the Thuringian Wartburg . It is considered the most important testimony to Thuringian poetry . The Wartburg War reflects the literary bloom at the court of Landgrave Hermann I around 1200. As a review of this heyday several decades later, famous poets of this generation ( Wolfram von Eschenbach , Walther von der Vogelweide ) and fictional competitors ( Klingsor as a fictional character from Wolfram's Parzival , Heinrich von Ofterdingen ) put dialogical stanzas from a singing contest in the mouth.
Historical
As the oldest poems of Wartburg War, the "puzzle game" (riddle contest between Klingsor and Wolfram von Eschenbach) and "Aurons penny" (accusations against the clergy) are both in black tone made around 1239th The "puzzle game" was preceded by the "prince's praise" in 24 stanzas in the Thuringian princely tone in 1206/1207, in which six singers (Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Walther von der Vogelweide, the virtuous writer, Biterolf , Reinmar von Zweter and Wolfram) in front of the landgrave and the Landgrave of Thuringia argue about who knows how to praise the best prince in the best way. The defeated Heinrich von Ofterdingen finally receives permission to bring Klingsor, who is well versed in nigromance, over from Hungary, which leads to the "puzzle game". The Wartburg War also includes “Zabulon's Book” (Fürstenton, Klingsor - Wolfram competition) and the “Totenfeier” (black clay, mourning the death of the Landgrave and Count von Henneberg).
There is no such thing as the one Wartburg War, in a kind of ' final issue '. Versions that differ in each case have entered the great song manuscripts of the late Middle Ages ( Codex Manesse , which also contains a miniature depicting the singer's dispute, Jena song manuscript , Kolmar song manuscript ). Thuringian historians such as Dietrich von Apolda (after 1298) and Johannes Rothe (15th century) spun a historical event out of poetry . There the poetry remains committed to the panegyric of the Thuringian ruling house , to which it owes its creation.
The literary impact was obviously enormous. The Wartburg War was rewritten and continued into the 15th century. In this way he documents the art and self-image of the Meistersang . In the 14th century, a version of the puzzle game with 32 stanzas forms the entrance to the Lohengrin novel, also composed in black clay . As a result, Wolfram, one of the two actors in the puzzle game, appears as the narrator of the entire novel.
Karl Simrock made the most common translation into New High German in 1858.
Aftermath in modern times
The history of the texts in modern times begins with the rediscovery of the Middle Ages in the 18th century, whose pioneer JJ Bodmer can be considered. In the Romantic era , people mainly resorted to his minstrel version . As an artist's story from the German Middle Ages, in which the relationship between poetry and society was negotiated, the legend gained great popularity during the Romantic period. The clearest signal of a new interest was Heinrich von Ofterdingen des Novalis (published 1802), a large-scale, but unfinished literary novel. While Novalis no longer designed the actual singing competition here, he is at the center of ETA Hoffmann's story The Struggle of the Singers (1818) and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's poetry The Singers' War on the Wartburg (1828).
Most famous, however, is the dramatic implementation by Richard Wagner (opera Tannhäuser and the Singers 'War on Wartburg 1843), which, contrary to medieval tradition, merges the Tannhauser material with the Wartburg War for the first time, with the singers' war theme being completely subordinate to the redemption theme. The mythical magician Klingsor as an opponent of Christian sentiments is the figure who made this attachment possible because she was able to embody the same demonic, sensual conception of life and love that forced the late medieval Tannhauser under the spell of the woman Venus.
In the context of the rediscovery of the Wartburg as a symbol of German history and its restoration from 1838, Moritz von Schwind painted several rooms with frescoes on behalf of Grand Duke Carl Alexander between 1854 and 1856. The singers' dispute fresco is the largest of them. It makes the viewer believe that he is at the historically true place of the event. The inscription states:
- IN THIS ROOM THE SINGER WAS CONCERNED ON THE 7th JULY 1207 / THE BIRTHDAY OF SALVATION. ELISABETH.
In 1857 Carl Alexander commissioned the poet Joseph Victor von Scheffel to write a novel about the Singers' War at the Wartburg. In the end, Scheffel fails with his large-scale project of an all-encompassing Wartburg novel that was supposed to crown his work. However, he publishes some songs intended for the novel ( Frau Aventiure. Songs from Heinrich von Ofterdingen's time , 1863) and a fragment of the novel as an independent novella ( Juniperius , 1867).
In the first half of the 20th century, the Wartburg War became the motif of various increasingly nationalist novels such as Wilhelm Arminius ' Wartburg-Kronen (1905), Wilhelm Kotzde-Kottenrodt's Wolfram (1920) or Rudolf Leonhard Heubner's Wolfram von Eschenbach (1934). In particular, they stylized Heinrich von Ofterdingen as the alleged author of the Nibelungenlied as a German poet par excellence who declares war on the "Welschen Minnetand" Wolframs von Eschenbach and Walthers von der Vogelweide . The first stage play (based on Motte Fouqué) about the Wartburg War was premiered in 1903, Friedrich Lienhards Heinrich von Ofterdingen , the first part of a Wartburg trilogy.
In September 2002, a three-day medieval festival was staged as a singing war in the Palas on the Wartburg. The artists, who appeared in medieval costumes, played with musical sounds and chants at the guest performance, which was sold out with around 900 visitors.
In 2008, the rock band In Extremo used the singer's war at the Wartburg as a theme for their album Sængerkrieg .
In 2012, the author Robert Löhr published a new interpretation of the singer's war saga with War of the Singers .
literature
- Steffen Raßloff , Lutz Gebhardt : The Thuringian Landgraves. History and legends . Ilmenau 2017, ISBN 978-3-95560-055-6 .
- Erica von Dellingshausen: The Wartburg. A place of intellectual historical developments. Stuttgart 1983, pp. 19-35.
- August Koberstein: About the probable age and the meaning of the poem from the Wartburg war. Bürger, Naumburg 1823.
- Friedrich Mess: Heinrich von Ofterdingen: Wartburg War and related seals. Böhlau, Weimar 1963.
- Herfried Münkler : The Germans and their Myths . Rowohlt, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-87134-607-1 , pp. 304-311.
- Hermann von Plötz: About the singing war on the Wartburg. Hoffmann, Weimar 1851.
- Johann Carl Friedrich Rinne: There was no singing war in Wartburg. Webel, Zeitz 1842.
- Robert Löhr : The singer's war. Piper Verlag, Munich, Zurich 2012. ISBN 978-3-492-05451-5 .
- Tom Albert Rompelmann: The Wartburg War . HJ Paris, Amsterdam 1939.
- Burghart Wachinger: Singers' War. Investigations into the poetry of the 13th century. Beck, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-406-02842-X .
- Burghart Wachinger: The singers' dispute at the Wartburg. From Manesse's handwriting to Moritz von Schwind. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2004, ISBN 3-11-017919-9 (easy-to-read, short introduction).
Web links
- The Wartburg War, edited by Simrock 1858: Prince's praise, puzzle game, The Grail as a stone from Lucifer's crown, Zabulon's book, Middle High German and in Simrock's revised translation (network edition)
- Selected bibliography as of 2001
Individual evidence
- ↑ (eol / rbr): Singers' War: repetition after almost 800 years. WartburgkreisOnline, September 9, 2002, accessed on September 6, 2011 : “Well-known singers and musicians accepted the invitation to the singing dispute. Karsten Wolfewicz (“Truchsess von Weissensee”) had come, singing and a Gothic harp, exaquier; Marc Lewon (“Markus von Schadeck”) vocals and mandora, nyckelharpa; Dr. Almut Kirchner (“La Trobadora”) vocals and Gothic harp; Peter Rabanser (“Pirino da Selva”) vocals and tanburita, Ud; Duo Robert Weinkauf (“Anselm an der Amselalm”) and Kay Krause (“Kroesus Kraushaar”) singing and medieval lutes; Hans Hegner ("Der Fundevogel") vocals, symphonia, one-hand flute and drums. Landgraf and Sophie were portrayed by Jan Seidel and Jana Pardeß, Jörg Peukert was the “Orator de Novo Castro” and Cornelia Schütte danced as “Yasmina, the lovely dancer”. Three evenings with singing, entertainment, poetry, dance and music brought the Middle Ages to life. "