GERMAN CONSIDERATIONS: WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
A criticism of the world of feudalism, chivalry, and love may be had from the impressions and temperamental reactions of a certain thinking atom revolving in the same. The atom referred to was Walther von der Vogelweide, a German, a knight, a Minnesinger, and a national poet whose thoughts were moved by the instincts of his caste and race.
In language, temperament, and character, the Germans east of the Rhine were Germans still in the thirteenth century. They had accepted, and even vitally appropriated, Latin Christianity; those of them who were educated had received a Latin education. Yet their natures, though somewhat tempered, showed largely and distinctly German. Moreover, through the centuries, they had acquired—or rather they had never lost—a national antipathy toward those Roman papal well-springs of authority, which seemed to suck back German gold and lands in return for spiritual assurance and political betrayal.
A different and already mediaevalized element had also become part of German culture, to wit, the matter of the French Arthurian romances and the lyric fashions of Provence, which, working together, had captivated modish German circles from the Rhine to the Danube. Nevertheless the German character maintained itself in the Minnelieder which followed Provençal poetry, and in the höfisch (courtly) epics which were palpable translations from the French.[8] The distinguished group of German poets whose lives fall around the year 1200, were as German as their language, although they borrowed from abroad the form and matter of their compositions.
There could be no better Germans than the two most thoughtful of this group, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide. Most Germanically the former wrestled with that ancient theme, “from suffering, wisdom,” which he pressed into the tale of Parzival. His great poem, achieved with toil and sweat, was mighty in its climaxes, and fit to strengthen the hearts of those men who through sorrow and loneliness and despair’s temptations were growing “slowly wise.”
The virtues which Wolfram praised and embodied in his hero were those praised in the verses, and even, one may think, strugglingly exemplified in the conduct, of Walther von der Vogelweide,[9] most famous of Minnesingers, and a power in the German lands through his Sprüche, or verses personal and political. Less is known of his life than of his whole and manly views, his poetic fancies, his musings, his hopes, and great depressions. Many places have claimed the honour of his birth, which took place somewhat before 1170. He was poor, and through his youth and manhood moved about from castle to castle, and from court to court, seeking to win some recompense for his excellent verses and good company. Thus he learned much of men, “climbing another’s stairs,” with his fellows, at the Landgraf Hermann’s Wartburg, or at the Austrian ducal Court.
Walther’s Sprüche render his moods most surely, and reflect his outlook on the world. His charming Minnelieder bear more conventional evidence. The courtly German love-songs passing by this name were affected by the conceits and conventions of the Provençal poetry upon which they were modelled. A strong nature might use such with power, or break with their influence. Walther made his own the high convention of trouvère and troubadour, that love uplifts the lover’s being. Besides this, and besides the lighter forms and phrases current in such poetry, his Lieder carry natural feeling, joy, and moral levity, according to the theme; they also may express Walther’s convictions.
To take examples: Walther’s Tagelied[10] imitates the Provençal alba (dawn), in which knight and truant lady bewail the coming of the light and the parting which it brings. Far more joyous, and as immoral as one pleases, is Unter der Linde, most famous of his songs. Marvellously it gives the mood of love’s joy remembered—and anticipated too. The immorality is complete (if we will be serious), and is rendered most alluring by the utter gladness of the girl’s song—no repentance, no regret; only joy and roguish laughter.
Walther was young, he was a knight and a Minnesinger; he had doubtless loved, in this way! His love-songs have plenty to say of the red mouth, good for kissing—I care not who knows it either. But he also realizes, and greatly sings, the height and breadth and worth of love the true and stable, the blessing and completion of two lives, which comes to a false heart never.[11] He seems to feel it necessary to defend love for itself, perhaps because marriage was taken more seriously in this imitative German literature than in the French and Provençal originals: “Who says that love is sin, let him consider well. Many an honour dwells with her, and troth and happiness. If one does ill to the other, love is grieved. I do not mean false love; that were better named un-love. No friend of that, am I.” But his thoughts turn quickly to love as a lasting union: “He happy man, she happy woman, whose hearts are to each other true; both lives increased in price and worth; blessed their years and all their days.”[12]
Giving play to his caustic temper, Walther puts scorn upon the light of love: “Fool he who cannot understand what joy and good, love brings. But the light man is ever pleased with light things, as is fit!”[13] This Minnesinger applied most earnest standards to life; lofty his praise of the qualities of womanhood, which are better than beauty or riches: “woman” is a higher word than “lady”[14]—it took a German to say this. “He who carries hidden sorrow in his heart, let him think upon a good woman—he is freed.”[15] With a burst of patriotism, in one of his greatest poems Walther praises German women as the best in all the world.[16]