CHAPTER V

THE DAYS OF THE MINNESINGERS

With the extinction of the Franconian dynasty we approach the golden era of the Hohenstaufen emperors. The ascent of that noble race was due to that German loyalty which they had borne to Henry IV. in his distress. Their home was the lofty Suabian Staufen which towered over the wooded valley of the Rems and looked down on the beautiful land with its vineyards and continuous orchards. The Hohenstaufens belonged to the poetic, highly gifted race of the Suabians from which have sprung some of the greatest German poets and thinkers. Suabia is the cradle of many of the choicest spirits from antiquity down to Schiller and Uhland.

German history during the golden reign of the Hohenstaufen emperors is filled with the deeds of royal women no less than with those of their anointed husbands. Imperial women held the insignia at the death of the emperors. Kunigunde, consort of Henry II., at his death turned over to Konrad II., the first Salian Frank, the insignia of the empire, the crown, the sceptre, and the holy relics which belonged to the regalia; which the last Frank, Henry V. (1106-1125), on his deathbed, intrusted to his consort, requesting her to hand them to his successor, that she might win gratitude and influence; for great weight was attributed to their possession, as they were deemed to contain mysterious forces and to give to their possessor the favor of the saints. Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz, a cunning politician, induced the widowed empress to deliver the crown jewels to Frederic of Hohenstaufen, and then intrigued for the election of Lothaire the Saxon, who won the crown. At the next vacancy Konrad of Hohenstaufen (1138-1152) was elected, and founded the great Suabian dynasty. During its governance (1138-1254) the Germanic body politic displayed the highest degree of energy, and with that dynasty began and ended the most glorious period of mediæval German social life and literature. By the magnificence of their rule, the Suabian emperors, in spite of many and great political errors, through which they exhausted much of their strength in Italian wars, carried the romanticism of the Middle Ages to its zenith. In the same proportion in which the nation was raised by a knowledge of its own power, the national productions of art and letters were stamped with a bold and original character. Great men of extraordinary genius arose to exalt their own names with the glories of the empire.

The Roman expeditions of Frederick Barbarossa, who sought to restore the grandeur of Charlemagne, and of Otto the Great brought to Germany a new, original culture that took a place beside the old Latin, monkish, scholarly culture, with its gloomy clericalism. Chivalry, courtliness, the "gay science" of the Romance peoples, were grafted upon a knotty, rugged, but intensely healthy trunk. The very foundation of the new society stood in contrast with the ascetic gloom of the former church philosophy. The highest praise was now to be "gay and joyous in chaste moderation"; life, vigor, beauty, courtly elegance in form and countenance and speech marked the gentleman and the lady of the age. The eye was delighted by beautiful features and lovely expression; by stately appearance, fine movements, harmonious rhythm and dance, by splendid processions and courtly functions. Grace, charm, and loveliness were ardently sought: the commonplace and the vulgar were avoided as rustic and ridiculous.

The Hohenstaufens are the impersonation of romantic chivalry. There is in all of them, especially in Frederick II. (1212-1250), a profound romantic tendency, a thirst for heroic greatness, glory, immortality. A vein of poetry pulses through their history, "to develop which says Scherr will be reserved perhaps to some future German Shakespeare." The power of Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190) raised the nation to an intellectual elevation which created imperishable works of art and poetry. Glorious, though fruitless expeditions to Italy and crusades to the Orient extended mightily the limited horizon of the Germans: Southern and Oriental beauty penetrated the monachism of the North. The Italian and Sicilian courts of Frederick II. were thronged with the fairest ladies of Orient and Occident. Saracen beauties were intermingled with the loveliest women of the German and Roman and Greek world. All were bent upon gallantry, and song and poetry were the common accomplishments. The Orient once more fertilized the Occident; the fulness of Oriental fancy and symbolism poured over the Germans romance, wisdom and love, passion and vice, and cast a roseate bloom over the coarse actuality of the death struggle between Empire and Papacy, idealizing the "blood and iron" services of German warriors on Southern and Eastern battlefields.

The struggle for the Holy Sepulchre blended Christian monachism and Christian chivalry in the spiritual orders: the Knights Templars, the Knights of Saint John, the Teutonic Order. Their holy vows taken in the presence of ladies and princes "to honor and defer to the Church, to be true and obedient to the sovereign or feudal lord, to conduct no unjust feud, to defend widows and orphans," characterize sufficiently the ideal of their mission. The rules of honor are laid down in the new word Courtoisie, an essential part of which is devotion and service to ladies. Nevertheless, this service to ladies has a religious root: it is but the evolution to its final consequence of the old German veneration for women which Christianity crystallized in the cult of the Holy Virgin Mary. Religion is greatly dependent upon the emotions, thus making even this cult more sensuous than rational. Inasmuch as this religious affection is transferred to the entire sex, we find the most beautiful side of knighthood expressed and codified in the Minnedienst, or love service. And, in so far as the delight of youthful life and feeling was considered as dependent upon the life of nature in general, the subject of the minnesongs dealt with love within the natural environment of fields and forests, rivers and mountains, spring and flowers, winter and ice. "In the month of May," runs Freytag's beautiful description, "when the trees were adorned with foliage, and the heath with flowers, when the birds sang, and the brooks, freed from ice and snow, trickled through the meadows, then began also for the courtly man the sunny time of joy. Then he prepared his arms and armour, thought of adornment and fine garments, and wandered away for love-wooing, to repasts, to wedding and tournament, or to earnest war to acquire honor or to serve his chosen lady, or to win estates. But when the winter approached, the little birds migrated away, the meadows faded, the leaves sank from the trees, frost hovered about the burgh, then the joyful activity in the district terminated, the German knight retired to the interior of the house, lived honorably with wife and children and dreamed golden dreams in the hope of the next awakening of life." This conception of a dualism of human life, a serene, sunny side, and a cold twilight pervades the entire chivalrous poetry. It is but a realization of the dualism of the human soul, as Goethe has wonderfully expressed it in his Faust:

"Two souls alas! reside within my breast,

And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.

One with tenacious organs holds in love