The Genius of the German Lyric

An Historic Survey Of Its Formal And Metaphysical Values

August Closs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000766608
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Originally published in 1938 and updated in 1962, this remains one of the few comprehensive studies of the German lyric in any language, ranging from the Middle Ages to the 1960s. By the use of detailed critical analysis the book interprets the essence of German lyric poetry and includes a study of the phases of German literature in the first half of the 20th Century.

I

THE GERMAN MINNESINGERS

Revived interest in the Middle Ages

German minnesong! The word conjures up a visionary world of knights and minstrels, of romanticism buried beneath the dust of seven hundred years. But if the legacy of medieval lyric verse is to mean more to us than an object of mere sentimental infatuation or a dead text mutilated and dissected by philological zeal, we must investigate its origins and development, its ethic and esthetic code, and endeavour to understand something of the history of those social conditions that gave it birth. Our first step, in approaching these problems, must be to ask what significance this literary phenomenon of the Middle Ages has for our present age, which witnessed Stefan George invoking a “third humanism” with his vision of “Sparta’s steel-bound courage wedded to Ionia’s grace.” How remote George’s attitude is from that of the true Middle Ages is proved by his Sagen und Sänge, in which a solemn Parzivalstimmung, the love-cult (Minnedienst), or the prowess of the Knight Templar, are treated without any attempt to regain their local colour. They only represent stages of the poet’s own spiritual development. But the dawn of the twentieth century also gave birth to Rilke’s Stunden-Buch, the memento mori of the modern Gottsucher, singing of the monastic life and pilgrimage of poverty and death:

“We are only the husk and the leaf.

The great death which lives in each of us,

That is the fruit round which all turns.”

A gulf separates such mysticism, with its meditations on death and the vita contemplativa, from the heritage of Goethe’s classicism or even George’s steel-tempered vision of Christianity. In deep gratitude to the Worpswede painter Heinrich Vogeler, Rilke, the poet of the Marienleben, turns from the beguilements of Dame World to set out on his quest of Gottesminne. Not that the medieval poet despised life.

In the field of research many a treatise published during recent years testifies that here too interest in the Middle Ages is by no means exhausted, although the vast production of medieval texts and Monumenta Germaniae Historica are inevitably resulting in a diminished output. The popularity enjoyed by Hefele’s essays, Schmalenbach’s Das Mittelalter and Landsberg’s Die Welt des Mittelalters und wir is characteristic of our present-day attitude, whilst a revived enthusiasm for medieval art was furthered by Dvořak, Worringer, Strzygowski, Dehio, Pinder, and others. Research on the cultural history of the Middle Ages pointed out the importance of transcendental gradualism, for instance in Walter’s “Ich saz ûfeime steine” where asceticism and earthly joy seek reconciliation. Utile et Honestum are allotted their special positions in the moral scale leading towards Summum Bonum. We see therefore that the Middle Ages are by no means dead. Improving on Eiken’s Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, H. Brinkmann and Martin based their studies on Troeltsch, who denied the purely ascetic character of medieval thought and pointed to its organic unity in which the spirit of classicism yet lingered. There is no longer any doubt that the antique age itself knew pessimism, asceticism, and mysticism (through Plotinus, the Stoics, and Orphism), and that harmony is not only to be found in the culture of Greece and Rome but in the Middle Ages, for instance in the cult of the holy Virgin (Marienideal). Likewise medieval literature and art are not lacking in the profane element. The classic grandeur of the carven figures at Naumburg and the Bamberg Rider, that symbol of hoher moot and mâze, afford parallels to the Staufen ideal in the field of art.

Social and Political Conditions

More than seven hundred years have passed since German art and song put forth their first incomparable blossom. In 1227 Walther von der Vogelweide composed his moving elegy:

“Owê war sint verswunden alliu mîniujâr?…. ”

Half religious, half political, it is at once a confession and meditation on his own life, tinged with something of the spirit of Parzival. A few years later—Wolfram and Heinrich von Morungen having already preceded him—he bade farewell to this world. Walther’s fresh and powerful gift of song, his unique personality which burst the conventions of contemporary lyric poetry, or transfused them with new vitality, his intimate yet proudly noble tone, would in themselves suffice to render the German minnesong immortal. Certainly it may be difficult to feel at ease amidst the constrained forms which bound the chivalric ideal, but Walther and his somewhat older contemporary Reinmar, Wolfram, with his verse pent with volcanic fire, Heinrich von Morungen, the poet of the swinging rhythm: “Ich hôrte ûf der heide… ,” or the darkly passionate dawn-song: “Owe, sol abir mir iemir me… ,” and many another throng to join their exquisite lyric note to the glory of epic verse which triumphed in Hartmann, Gottfried, Wolfram, and that mighty unknown writer of the Nibelungenlied.

We shall understand the birth, development, and decay of the minnesong far better if we try to obtain a picture of the social and political circumstances which gave it birth, at the time when the proud walls of the Wartburg, near Eisenach in the heart of the Thuringian forests, resounded with the fervour of the Sängerstreit. Here Landgraf Hermann, famed for the hospitality he offered to many an unruly company of minstrels, enriched his court with the song of Walther and Wolfram.

This period, and that shortly preceding it, recognized three social classes of poets, the wandering scholar, the cleric, and the knight. The fourth class of poets, the “burgher-scholar,” though represented in this early period by Gottfried of Strassburg, did not reach full development until the age of chivalry had passed. The so-called vagantes, wandering professional minstrels, were not always clerics. They sang their own songs and others as a means of livelihood. We must thus differentiate between worldly cleric verse, professional poetry (Walther!), and the so-called lower orders of song (niedere Trink-, Spiel- und Betteldichtung).

The clerics, for the most part monks who until about 1150 had held sway over literary activity, now gradually lost their influence, although they continued even till a far later date to embellish their sermons with German poetry and use it as a means of popularizing their ascetic and ecclesiastic Weltanschauung. From the pulpit there reverberated ever and again, in prose and rhyme, the sombre admonition to reject Frau Welt, whose seductive power was decried even by laymen, both of the knightly and bourgeois class. Thus Walther in his valediction to the earth sings:

“Frô Werlt, ich hon ze vil gesogen:

Ich wil entwonen, des ist zît.…”

Lyric and epic effusions poured forth in praise of the Trinity, of Mary, the saints, and martyrs. Not only subjects from the Old and New Testaments, but also those of worldly origin (Alexanderlied, Rolandslied) were recited by clerics as an instrument of edification. They paled when chivalry, developing its own artistic code, gave birth in the minnesong to a form of lyric poetry which was the pure expression of its social cult. For the knights not only encouraged worldly poetry but were also well acquainted with spiritual themes, such as crusading songs, legends, and poetry in praise of the Virgin Mary.

Thus the minnesong reached its perfection in the thirteenth century when knighthood was at its zenith. The clergy had likewise secured a privileged position for themselves, for the mitred shepherds of the soul were simultaneously lords of the realm. Jeopardized by the inexorable struggle for power between church and state, the emperor’s sovereign authority threatened to collapse. Henry IV was forced to suffer humiliation at Canossa in order to regain his kingdom. Gregory VII (Hildebrand) summoned Christendom to fight the paynim, thereby (as Scherer rightly recognized) enabling his successors to weld all the chivalric ideals and ambitions of the West into one great weapon and place it in the hand of the church, where it was soon found useful for other purposes, besides that of subduing the paynim. That same Gregory, as wily a statesman as he was pope, summoned the sovereignty of the people against the emperor.

Then once again the Staufen, Frederick Barbarossa (†1190), Henry VI (†1197), and his son Frederick II (†1250), the most illustrious of his line, who in his indefatigable struggle against a succession of popes (Innocent III, Honorius III, Gregory IX, and Innocent IV) led the Holy Roman empire to the last climax of its glory under the Staufen reign, laughed defiance in the face of Rome. He who fostered both the Italian canzona and German minnesong stands as a glorious symbol of cultural relations which flourished between different lands.

Chivalry, a European phenomenon, was, for all its exclusive class-consciousness, cosmopolitan in character, a fact to which education, social forms and organization all bear witness. Until he had reached his seventh year the knight-to-be remained under the care of his mother, after which the child (kint or kindelîn) was sent to another court to receive his education. At the age of fifteen the young noble (Junchêrre) was initiated yet further into the rules of the court, of the chase and the tournament. At twenty he was usually dubbed knight, after he had been well versed in courtly etiquette—wol gebâren und wider die frouwen sprechen, gotes hulde und der werlde vröude mêren. One is tempted to compare this harmonious social upbringing with that of Cas-tiglione’s Cortegiano, who represents the social ideal of the Italian renaissance with its emphasis on self-control, knightly games, duelling, riding, dancing, swimming, knowledge of several languages and belles-lettres, aesthetic taste, musical talent, etc., or we may see something of the same spirit still reflected in the “gentleman” of the present day. The knight was supposed to be magnanimus, ingenuus, largifluus, egregius, and strenuus, according to the favourite formula, the first letters of these adjectives spelling the word m-i-l-e-s. The dubbing entitled the young knight to carry his shield in the service of God, of his liege lord and of love (minne). The court festival, particularly the opening of the court by Frederick Barbarossa at Mainz in 1184, heightened the glory of knighthood; both German and Romanc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: The origins of the German lyric
• CHAPTER I. THE GERMAN MINNESINGERS
• CHAPTER II. THE GERMAN FOLK-SONG
• CHAPTER III. DECLINE AND REBIRTH
• CHAPTER IV. OPITZ
• CHAPTER V. AUFKLÄRUNG AND PIETISM
• CHAPTER VI. KLOPSTOCK
• CHAPTER VII. HÖLDERLIN
• CHAPTER VIII. GERMAN ROMANTICISM PROPER AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
• CHAPTER IX. AUSTRIA. BIEDERMEIER. GRILLPARZER
• CHAPTER X. THE POLITICAL LYRIC ROUND ABOUT THE YEARS 1830 AND 1840-1848
• CHAPTER XI. DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF
• CHAPTER XII. CHANGING VIEWS
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Index