Born: Probably in lower Austria; c. 1170
Died: Near Würzburg, Bavaria, Holy Roman Empire (now in Germany); c. 1230
PRINCIPAL POETRY
Songs and Sayings of Walther von der Vogelweide, 1917
Poems, 1952
Die Gedichte, 1959 (Lachmann-Kraus edition)
Walther von der Vogelweide: The Single-Stanza Lyrics, 2002 (bilingual text; translated and edited by Frederick Goldin)
OTHER LITERARY FORMS
Walther von der Vogelweide (VOL-tur fawn dur FOH-guhl-vi-duh) was exclusively a lyric poet.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Walther von der Vogelweide is recognized as the single most important Middle High German lyric poet. According to Peter Wapnewski, he made two pioneering contributions to literary history. First, he moved German courtly love poetry from the sterile artificiality of conventional literature to a fresh personal expression, even inventing a corresponding lyric genre, the Mädchenlieder (songs to a common-class girl, sometimes also misleadingly called songs of “lower love”). Second, he gave a new nobility to didactic and political poetry. Kuno Francke goes so far as to see in Walther’s love songs “the struggle for the emancipation of the individual” that eventually led to the overthrow of “the whole system of medieval hierarchy” and “an anticipation of this great emancipation movement, a protest of the individual against the dictates of society.” Scholar Peter Rühmkorf deromanticizes the ultrapatriotic German image of Walther and sees him primarily in individualistic terms as a “self” struggling for personal identity and recognition in a time of social crisis.
This much is certain: Whether addressing an emperor, a pope, or a high nobleman or lady, Walther speaks with courage, authority, and clarity; he is not intimidated by any class distinctions. In his love poetry, he is not satisfied with a one-sided platonic relationship or an adulation of mere external beauty or high social status; for him, love is a shared affection, a reciprocal meeting of hearts and minds, an inner attitude, an important ennobling force in the lives of men and women. The scope of Walther’s themes and the tone and manner of their treatment make it unmistakably clear that his office as a lyric poet went beyond courtly entertainment and included functions of political propaganda and ethical critique, functions that are performed today by the communications media. However, Walther, like other medieval lyric poets, composed and sang his own songs, and he was more highly praised by his contemporaries for his singing than for his lyrics.
BIOGRAPHY
Walther von der Vogelweide was born about 1170, possibly of the lower nobility. Because the term Vogelweide was a common word meaning bird sanctuary, numerous places have claimed to be the poet’s birthplace, most conspicuously Vogelweidhof, near Bozen, South Tyrol, where an impressive monument in his honor has been erected; since this region did not belong to Austria at the time and the Austrian dialect was not spoken there, however, scholars speculate that Walther probably was born in lower Austria. Wherever his birthplace, the poet “learned to sing and recite in Austria,” appearing at the court of Duke Frederick in Vienna about 1190 and probably learning his craft from Reinmar von Hagenau.
In 1198, Walther’s patron died; Walther was forced to leave Vienna to begin the uncertain life of a wandering minstrel. The only extant historical document concerning him is a receipt showing that Wolfger, bishop of Passau, had given “to the singer Walther de Vogelweide five solidi for a fur coat on Saint Martin’s Day in the year 1203.” Among his many other patrons was Count Hermann of Thuringia, at whose court he met Wolfram von Eschenbach, author of Parzival (c. 1200-1210; English translation, 1894), and other lyric poets. Walther wrote songs for three emperors; after Philip of Swabia was murdered and his successor Otto IV allegedly did not pay the poet enough, Walther shifted his allegiance to Friedrick II, who eventually rewarded him with a small property near Würzburg in about 1220. Presumably, Walther did not participate in the Crusade of 1228 and died about 1230 near Würzburg, where his grave could still be seen in the cathedral garden half a century later. Another minstrel, Hugo von Trimberg, grieved over Walther’s death with the words, “Ah Sir Walther von der Vogelweide, I would feel sorry for whomever forgot you.”
ANALYSIS
In only one generation, from 1180 to 1210, the great flowering of Middle High German courtly culture under the Hohenstaufen Dynasty produced—in addition to four great epic writers, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the anonymous author of the Nibelungenlied (c. 1200; English translation, 1848)—numerous lyric poets, the most renowned of them being Walther von der Vogelweide. Even princes and emperors ranked among the courtly love poets. The roots of this German medieval poetry are multiple: Provençal and northern French courtly love poetry, indigenous songs and Goliardic verse such as that collected in Carmina burana (1847), and a variety of Latin secular and religious genres (eulogies, sequences), some dating back to antiquity. Medieval German poetry features a great variety of meters and melodies, since the minstrel was expected to compose a new meter and melody for each song.
Courtly love poetry (Minnesäng) was symptomatic of a new secular culture that rejected the “contempt of the world” preached for centuries by the monastic orders and that sought instead to harmonize eternal salvation with earthly happiness. The role of women in the courts and castles was to elevate and dignify life and to convey a certain hoher muot (joy of life), which was the crowning virtue in the knightly code. Although the love songs sometimes have a trace of the occasional in them—they often are addressed to a particular woman and reflect specific circumstances—such love poetry was not a stylized proposal for a literal love relationship, but an artistic achievement, a fictional, public musical presentation on the theme of love for the amusement and edification of the entire court (estimated as usually comprising between thirty and seventy persons). Since the idolized woman was supposed to be of high rank, married and virtuous, no erotic reciprocation was expected but, at most, a greeting or token of appreciation. Praise of the woman was not a means to an end but an ennobling activity in itself, for the lady represented the humane ideal of beauty and dignity for which this secular knightly society was striving. Her being not only was physically beautiful and charming but also encompassed a catalog of virtues such as honor, self-discipline, constancy, moderation, and loyalty—traits of a proud, aristocratic society.
MÄDCHENLIEDER
Walther regarded highly his function as a courtly love poet who could express for the men and women of his society the emotions of body and soul. Under Walther’s predecessor and teacher, Reinmar, Minnelyrik (love poetry) had degenerated into a genre that was obsessed with the monotonous theme of the unrequited lover. Walther broke with this tradition—and from Reinmar—and introduced many new dimensions into the thematics of courtly love poetry. His Mädchenlieder scandalized society by directing love and the title Frouwe (noble lady) to a common-class girl. He also introduced into courtly poetry a mature, reciprocally fulfilled marital love, contrary to the tradition of unrequitedness. Late in life, he rejected the ribaldry and crudity that was brought into courtly love poetry under the influence of peasant dances by a new generation of minstrels, including Neidhart von Reuenthal. Finally, he turned away from “Lady World” and his “many errors” as a Minnesänger and addressed God himself as “you sweet true Love.” Underlying this broad span of the love concept in Walther’s poems is the medieval idea of “gradualism,” which sees all reality as an ascending ladder of being, each rung different in degree but analogous to the ones above and below—from the various levels of earthly reality, through a person, who is both body and soul, to the heights of spirit in God.
Paul Stapf divides the love lyrics chronologically into six periods: early love songs, songs from 1198 to 1203, high courtly love, Mädchenlieder, new high courtly love, and late songs.
Walther’s early love songs, written before leaving the Viennese court in 1198, though still quite within the conventions of the genre, already display the sharp tension created by the ambiguity of traditional love poetry. On one hand, it was supposed to represent an approved public relationship involving “conversation” with and “instruction” as well as “praise” of the woman by the poet, who was rewarded with a “greeting” or token of esteem, all strictly on a platonic level; on the other, by the very nature of love between man and woman, it sometimes involved an implicit erotic attraction that threatened to erupt into socially unacceptable amorous fulfillment. In these early poems, the poet’s love is rejected; the woman is unapproachable and on the defensive; she has maintained her dignity as a woman and will hold him accountable for any violation of proper decorum. In some poems, she would like to grant his desire for a love affair, but social pressure prevents it; she has a duty to maintain her honor. With a touch of resignation, she submits to the dictates of society: “Mir tuot einer slahtewille” (“Can She Alone Be Happy When All Others Are Sad?”). Sometimes the concept of honor is deepened to a personal ethical code. She wants “to have a woman’s proper qualities … since a beautiful body is worthless without understanding,” that is, without moral responsibility.
Perhaps the very ambiguity and wide range of meaning of courtly love is what invites some poems to be highly rational and analytical: “Whoever says that love is a sin, should first reflect well, for love contains many a distinction which one can rightly enjoy, and its consequence is constancy and great happiness…. I am not speaking of false love, which would better be called non-love: I will always oppose it.” However, the same poem also speaks from living experience: “No one knows what true joy is who did not receive it from a woman.” Walther leaves no doubt as to the edifying and positive nature of love: “Love is the source of all good qualities; without love no heart can be truly happy.”
MINSTREL YEARS
Walther’s departure from the court at Vienna marks a sharp break in his life and poetry and begins a second stage of his creative activity, his early years as a wandering minstrel, from 1198 to 1203. His songs now show the direct influence of the vagabond poets of the Carmina burana. One single theme runs through them all: how summer follows winter and love chases away sadness. Their execution is smoother and the nature imagery is brighter, used economically like a kind of symbolic shorthand: In winter, the frost hurts the little birds so much that they no longer sing; in summer, the girls will be playing ball in the street again (a rare glimpse of medieval everyday life). The poet celebrates the great power of May over humans and nature. Perhaps May is a magician, he suggests; wherever his delight goes, no one is old. The winter of 1198 must have been particularly severe; the poet believed he would “never again pick red flowers in the green meadows.” His death, he muses, would have been “a loss to all good men who long for joy and who like to sing and dance.”
HIGH COURTLY LOVE POEMS
The poet’s third period, from 1203 to 1205, was characterized by poems of “high courtly love” which were traditional, rational, and sophisticated. Most of the poems of this period are united by a single theme: constancy and reciprocity. These are two sides of the same coin: The lady demands fidelity on the poet’s part and rebukes him for praising other women; the poet replies that he cannot continue praising only her if she refuses to reciprocate his love.
A highly optimistic poem called “Ir Sult sprechen” (“Speak a Welcome”) illustrates the poet’s praise of other women: He has seen many countries, and German ways please him the best. German men are handsome, and German women are like angels; whoever scolds any of them is mistaken (probably an allusion to the Provençal poet Peire Vidal’s castigations of German manners). Whoever seeks virtue and pure love should come to Germany. “From the Elbe to the Rhein and back again as far as Hungary live the best people I have ever known in the world. If I can judge good upbringing and beauty, by God, the women are nobler here than anywhere else.” Now a harsh note is struck: His lady reproaches him for praising other women and thus being guilty of inconstancy. As if enraged at the lady’s rebuke, he retaliates in the song “Staet ist ein Angest und ein Nôt” (“Constancy Is Fear and Torment”), harping ironically on constancy, naming it twelve times in two short stanzas, and finally exclaiming “Lady Constancy, set me free!”
Poem after poem reflects a period of strife, for example, “Saget mir ieman, waz ist Minne?” (“What Is Loving?”), “Daz ich dich sô selten grüeze” (“That I So Seldom Praise You Is No Misdeed of Mine”), and “Mîn Frowe ist ein ungenaedic Wîp” (“My Lady Is a Cruel Woman”). Finally, in “What Is Loving?,” the poet hammers out the principle that will lead to the end of his relationship with this “lady” and to his abandonment of one-sided courtly love: “Love is the joy of two hearts. If they share equally, then love is there; if this is not so, then one heart cannot receive it.” The poet, however, does not conceal a sour, unchivalric remark: “If I have grown old in her service, she’s not gotten any younger either.” Finally, he exhorts his young rival: “Avenge me and whip her old skin with fresh switches.”
LOWER LOVE SONGS
The fourth group of songs (written after 1203 and therefore somewhat overlapping the previous group) overcomes this discord and enters a new phase of fulfillment with a woman of equal or lower rank. In “Herzeliebez Frowelîn” (“Little Maid So Dear”), whatever joy the poet experienced in this world was caused “by her beauty, her goodness, and her red mouth that laughs so lovingly.” He responds to those who criticize him for directing his love songs to a person of lower rank, claiming that “they don’t have any idea what love is, they have never experienced true love, since they love only for wealth or external beauty. What kind of love is that?” He reiterates his reason for having changed from “high courtly love” to this more satisfying relationship: “A Lover’s affection is nothing if it goes unrequited. One-sided love is worthless; it must be shared, permeating two hearts and none besides.”
The most famous of Walther’s songs of “lower love” is “Unter der Linden” (“Under the Linden-Tree”), in which a naïve, common-class girl rejoices in her love experience under the linden tree, the crushed flowers still showing the place where the couple had lain. What he did with her no one will ever know except he and she and the little bird that sang the refrain “Tandaradei!” Equally masterful is the poem “Die welt was gelf, rôt unde blâ” (“The World in Red and Blue Was Gay”), also called the “vowel poem” since, in German, each stanza rhymes with one of the vowels a, e, i, o, and u; it is a highly graphic poem calling for the end of winter. One wryly humorous poem, “Wer kan nû ze danke singen?” (“Who Can Please Everyone with His Song?”), lauds the poet’s broad range of experience, which makes it possible for him to sing a wide variety of songs, but observes that people still are dissatisfied.
NEW HIGH LOVE
In his fifth period, that of “new high love” (from 1205 to about 1220), Walther’s songs show more depth , maturity, and formal perfection. The “lady” seems to be of very high social rank, and the relationship is a conventional one. There is sadness at court, the times are unsuited for song, true love has died, and the whole world is beset with troubles. Song is tempted to wait for better times, as in “Die zwîvelaere Sprechent” (“The Doubters”). The exuberance of youth is over, and the poet articulates a positive attitude even toward the unequal relationship represented by conventional courtly love, as long as there is some reciprocation: “He is certainly also fortunate who observes her virtues precisely so that it moves his heart. An understanding woman should respond with affection.” This kind of love can motivate poetry: “Just a loving look from a woman gives joy to the heart…. But what is like the happiness where a beloved heart is faithful, beautiful, chaste, and of good morals? The lucky man who has won this does nothing wrong to praise it before strangers.” The importance of moderation is explained in “Ich hoere iu sô vil tugende jehen” (“I Hear You Speak of So Many Virtues”) and “Allerwerde keit ein Füegerinne” (“Coordinator of All Values, Lady Moderation”). One of Walther’s very best poems and the crown jewel of this period is “Sô die Bluomen ûz dem Grase dringent” (“When the Flowers Spring Out of the Grass”), which compares a beautiful May day with a beautiful noblewoman in all her finery. If the poet had to choose between the two, the outcome would be: “Sir May, you would have to become March before I gave up my lady.”
LATE SONGS
Three poems can adequately represent the late songs (from 1220 to 1230). “Ir reinen Wîp” (“Ye Women Pure”) is a sort of literary testament: “For forty years or more I have sung of love and of how one should live” (note the educational function of the poet). In “Frô Welt” (“Lady World”), he renounces the world because, while her beauty is lovely to look at from the front, from behind she is so horridly shameful that he wishes to spurn her forever. In “Ein Meister las” (“A Wise Man”), he meditates on the transitory quality of life and says, “It is high time for penance, since I, a sick man, now fear grim death.” The poem ends in a vein of religious repentance, an emphasis found in several poems, including the long Leich.
SPRUCH GENRE
About half of Walther’s poems belong to the broad genre of Spruch (political or didactic) poetry. Walther’s type of Spruch was formerly believed to have been a singlestanza spoken poem, but the melodies of some of them have been recovered, and it is now known that they were not recited but sung. Friedrich Maurer’s “song-theory” brought together in a single poem stanzas of the same “tone” or melody that had been variously scattered in the manuscripts. In Maurer’s view, each “tone” of a political song was invented in its own separate period, and thus stanzas belonging to one “tone” could be dated far apart in Walther’s time, although some of them were written over a period of a few years. “Each tone,” Maurer asserts, “has its briefly extended time of origin, but especially its own theme and subject matter.” Poems with different melodies, even though thematically similar, are not contemporaneous. The advantages of Maurer’s theory are that it facilitates study of the gradual evolution of Walther’s stanzaic art; it enriches interpretation by retrieving the overarching meaning connecting the stanzas of one “tone”; and it elucidates stanza-internal meaning by contrast and comparison. Maurer’s theory, however, has not been unanimously accepted by scholars. Stapf, editor of a fine annotated edition and modern German translation of Walther’s poems, rejects Maurer’s theory in favor of more accurate dating of the individual stanzas. Annette Georgi, in her study of the Latin and German Preislied, seems to follow Maurer.
The major controversy discussed in Walther’s political poems is the struggle between the empire and the papacy during the period of turmoil following the election of two pretenders to the imperial throne in 1198. After the death of Henry VI, son of Frederick Barbarossa, the Hohenstaufen faction elected Henry’s brother, Philip of Swabia, to succeed him, while the opposing Guelphs elected Otto IV of Brunswick. When Philip was murdered, Otto succeeded him with the approval of Pope Innocent III, who later shifted his support to the Hohenstaufen Frederick II. During this time, the petty princes tried to stake their own areas of power at the expense of the Crown. In these controversies, Walther supported first Philip, then Otto, and finally Frederick II, probably reflecting the successive allegiances of his princely patrons. In “Diu Krône ist elter danne der Künec Philippes sî” (“The Crown Is Older than King Philip”), Walther argues for Philip—his legitimacy based on the preestablished condition that the crown, which is older than he, fits him so well, a poetic allusion to the Hohenstaufen’s possession of the real Imperial crown (while his opponent Otto IV was crowned in the proper place, Aachen, and by the right ecclesiastic, the bishop of Cologne). Another poem in the “Philip tone” parallels, with some doctoring of historical facts, a procession of Philip at Magdeburg with the birth of Christ; Philip’s wife Irene (later renamed Mary), daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, is compared with the Virgin Mary, “rose without thorn, dove without gall.” Again the possession of the right insignia is stressed, but an even stronger title, the link with the great Hohenstaufen predecessors, is compared with the Trinity: “There walked an Emperor’s brother and an Emperor’s son in one garment, though the names are three” (Frederick, Henry, and Philip). To medieval man, accustomed to thinking in terms of the “analogy of being,” the impact of this poem confirming divine appointment must have been grat.
“I WAS SITTING UPON A ROCK”
Written in the “imperial tone,” the most famous of Walther’s poems, “Ich saz ûf eine Steine” (“I Was Sitting upon a Rock”), depicts Walther in the pose in which he is illustrated in the Manessische Handschrift: sitting on a large rock with his legs crossed and his chin and one cheek supported by the palm of one hand. He was pondering very anxiously on “how one should live in the world.” He could give no advice on “how one could acquire three things,” so that none of the three would be ruined. The first two are honor and property, “which often are harmful to one another”; the third is God’s grace, “which is worth more than the other two.” The poet would like to have all three in one chest, but unfortunately it is impossible for property, worldly honor, and God’s grace ever to dwell in one heart. “Paths and roads are blocked to them: Treachery lies in ambush, violence moves on the street; peace and justice are very sorely wounded. The three have no safe convoy, until these two recover.” The subject of the stanza is how to order one’s life correctly in this world.
The main components of the poem are seven abstract nouns; the main structuring device is a system of mathematical vectors that creates an ethical topography and conveys an impression of objective moral certainty. There are three goals that one should attempt to attain in life: honor (a), property (b), and God’s favor (c), which is more valuable than property and honor and is also eternal. There are two instrumental goods: peace (d) and justice (e). Because a and b are incompatible and together endanger c, one cannot hope to attain them all. At this point, an extended metaphor is inserted: The streets are insecure for a, b, and c, since two negative abstractions, treachery (f) and violence (g), threaten. The two ancillary values d and e are sorely wounded. The solution to a, b, and c’s predicament would be an extension and reversal of the metaphor “unsafe roads.” This solution cannot be achieved until the two ancillary values d and e have the “remedy” that corresponds to their “ailment.” A secondary rhetorical figure occurs twice, an apo koinu (the relation of one grammatical component to two others, one before and one after it); the clause “I could give no advice” can relate to the “how” clause before and the “how” clause after it. Similarly, “unfortunately this cannot be” negates both “I wanted to put them in one chest” and the possibility that honor, property, and God’s favor might come together in one heart.
“OTTO TONE”
Of the six poems in the “Otto tone,” the first in Maurer’s sequence welcomes Otto IV and announces the submission of the princes, specifically of Walther s patron Dietrich von Meissen; the second alludes to the eagle and lion on Otto’s coat of arms and calls on him to establish peace in Germany with “generosity” and “power” and to direct his country’s power against the pagans. The third, “Hêr Keiser” (“Sir Emperor”), calls even more emphatically for a crusade: “Sir Emperor, I am an official messenger and I bring you a message from God: you govern the earth, he governs the kingdom of heaven: he has ordered me to complain to you (you are his regent) that in his Son’s land the Pagans are exulting to the disgrace of you both. You should protect His rights.” The fourth Otto poem, “Hêr Bâbest” (“Sir Pope”), refers to the contradiction created when the pope first endorsed Otto and then switched to support his opponent: “We heard you command Christendom as to which Emperor they were to obey…. You should not forget that you said: ‘Whoever blesses you let him be blessed; whoever curses you, let him be cursed with a complete curse.’ For God’s sake, think that over, if the honor of the clergy means anything to you.” The fifth Otto poem applies the same complaint to the clergy at large: “We laymen are puzzled by the clergy’s instructions. What they taught us till a few short days ago, they now want to contradict…. One of the two instructions is false.” The sixth Otto poem retells the story of Jesus with the coin, and the conclusion gains cogency because the Middle High German words for “Caesar” and “Emperor” are identical: “Render to the Emperor what is the Emperor’s and to God what is God’s.”
ANTIPAPAL POEMS
The thread of unity in Walther’s political stance is his advocacy of a strong, united empire. This explains why in a good number of his poems he opposed the papacy, blaming papal interference in the affairs of the Reich for the widespread disorder in Germany. In “Künc Constantin der gap sô vil” (“King Constantine Gave So Much”), an angel cries “Alas, alas, three times alas” because of Constantine’s famous (forged) donation of temporal power to the papacy, which poisoned all Christendom by striking at its civil head: “All princes now live in honor except that the highest one is weakened…. The clergy want to pervert secular law.” From the first, Walther had blamed the pope for appointing two Germans to one throne “so that they would destroy and devastate the realm” and had identified cupidity as the motive: “Their German silver flows into my Italian coffers.” Elsewhere Walther minces no words about the negative influence of the clergy: “You bishops and noble clergy are misled. See how the Pope ties you with the devil’s ropes. If you tell us he has St. Peter’s keys, then tell us why he scrapes his words out of the Bible.” He then accuses the clergy of simony and of being the devil’s spokesmen. Certain lines most clearly identify the evil as seen by Walther: “If [the pope] is greedy, then all are greedy with him; if he lies, all lie with him; and if he deceives, they deceive with the same deception.” Walther’s viewpoint is clear: Christendom is ailing because its highest religious authority, the pope, undermines the chief secular authority, the emperor; moreover, by the pope’s high authority, the evil at the top contaminates all the parts.
PATRONAGE POEMS
An astonishing number of Walther’s poems deal with complaints about inadequate financial support or a lack of respect from one patron or another, including the Emperor Otto, whose stinginess Walther blames for his change of allegiance to Frederick. At first, the modern reader may be repelled by an impression of crass venality, but in time, he perceives the need of a poet struggling in a marginal, insecure existence for a basic livelihood and for minimal social acceptance in the feudal class system. Two poems treat of a misunderstanding with a noble patron because a subordinate official had failed to give Walther the promised clothing. Two others describe a lawsuit against a certain Gerhart Atze for shooting Walther’s horse on the grounds that its “relative” had bitten off Atze’s finger. Apparently, Walther’s class status was at stake, but, whatever the outcome, Walther avenged himself on Atze by poetic mockery. Other poems testify to the difficulties of being a dependent, wandering, unpropertied poet. One poem summarizes Walther’s weariness with the wanderer’s life: “Tonight here and tomorrow there, what a juggler’s life that is.” The reader rejoices with Walther when he finally receives from Frederick the small property that gives him a home of his own: “I have my fief, all the world, I have my fief! Now I do not fear the frost on my toes.”
“ELEGIE”
One of the most poignant poems Walther wrote is the famous “Elegie,” consisting of three stanzas all beginning with “Alas.” The second stanza deals with the sad state of the empire and the “ungentle letters” from Rome (excommunicating Frederick II in 1227); the third is a call for a crusade and contains a primitive but striking image of fallen earthly reality: “The world is beautiful on the outside, white, green and red, and within black in color, dark as death.” In the first stanza, Walther looks back on his life with elegiac poignancy like a reawakening Rip van Winkle: “Alas, where have all my years vanished? Did I dream my life, or is it true? Was all I dreamed existed really nothing? … My former playmates are tired and old. The meadow has been plowed, the forest has been cleared: If the river didn’t flow as it once did, truly my sorrow would be great.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berleth, Richard J. The Orphan Stone: The Minnesinge r Dream of Reich. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. Berleth uses Walther’s lyrics in this study of the relationship of the German political scene and German lyric poetry. Mixes biographical, literary, and the broader political elements of Walther’s career and output.
Garland, Henry, and Mary Garland. Oxford Companion to German Literature. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopedic reference work with a brief but informative section on Walther. Contains several important bibliographic references.
Gibbs, Marion E., and Sidney Johnson. Medieval German Literature: A Companion. 1997. Reprint. New York: Routledge, 2004. Contains an overview of Walther’s life and works, with a few translated passages and bibliography.
Heinen, Hubert. “Lofty and Base Love in Walther von der Vogelweide’s ‘So die bluomen’ and ‘Aller werdekeit.’” German Quarterly 51 (1978): 465-475. Treats Walther’s concept of love; includes quotations in German and English, notes, and bibliography.
Jones, George. Walther Von der Vogelweide. 1968. Reprint. New York: Twayne, 1970. A brief but comprehensive study of Walther’s life and major works. The first monographic treatment of Walther in English.
Kaplowitt, Stephen J. The Ennobling Power of Love in the Medieval German Lyric. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. Studies the theme for twentyone minnesingers in twenty-one short chapters, of which Walther’s is the longest at forty-five pages. Poems are discussed and described, but only briefly quoted.
McFarland, Timothy, and Silvia Ranawake, eds. Walther von der Vogelweide: Twelve Studies. Oxford, England: Meeuws, 1982. A collection of essays that covers a wide range of issues regarding influences on Walther, his influences on the genre, and his works’ forms and content.
Sayce, Olive. The Medieval German Lyric, 1150-1230: The Development of Its Theme and Forms in Their European Context. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1982. A widely ranging and very readable study that places Walther and his works in both the German and broader European streams of lyric development.
Scheibe, Fred Karl. Walther von der Vogelweide: Troubadour of the Middle Ages. New York: Vantage Press, 1969. A good brief introduction to Walther’s life and poetry that also surveys the reception of his works and lists English translations. Contains a bibliography.
Sullivan, Robert G. Justice and the Social Context of Early Middle High German Literature. New York: Routledge, 2001. A history of the Holy Roman Empire hinging on an examination of High German literature and its authors’ focus on social, political, and spiritual issues during a time of transformation. Bibliographical references, index.
David J. Parent