Reminds me of her love;
In the field of blood, with mournful mood,
I see her kerchief move;
Through foes I hew, whene'er I view
Her ruby ring, and blithely sing,
'Lady, I fight for thee.'"
The end of wooing is thus always understood to be the gratification of passion. But many ladies of the era of chivalry were extremely exacting, and imposed heavy tasks for the attainments of the prize which they alone could bestow. They allowed very slight favors at first, a glance, a trifle, otherwise they let the lover long and languish, as, for instance, in the case of the knight Ulrich von Lichtenstein, whom we shall soon consider more closely. Sometimes, however, favors which by modern standards would appear very improper were readily granted with a charming naïveté! The lover was allowed to accompany the lady of his heart to her bed chamber, and wait upon her and help her undress, a rather crucial service, as the mediæval custom was to sleep without any garments at all.
Weinhold calls minne the crown jewel of the German language, the love which rests in the soul; but it also had its shameful history of debasement, and finally met its death when the sensual prevailed over the spiritual, when minne became lust. Reinmar von Zweter could well say: "Minne is the gilding of love, a treasure above all virtue a teacher of pure morals, companion of chastity and fidelity, the noblest thing that is in the world, to which only woman can be compared. Minne flees from the fool, associates with the wise; minne strengthens honor, truth, and modesty." At the era of decadence of chivalry, however, minne came to mean sexual enjoyment par excellence.
The life of love in the high society of Germany for the lower gentry, according to Scherr, lived in their narrow, miserably equipped burgh stalls on a very low level became, in the course of time, a perfectly developed art and science; and Weinhold firmly believes that the highborn lords and ladies at the German courts dialectically treated interesting themes of love which may have had the forms of real courts of love, in imitation of the French Cour d'Amour. It is true, however, that some great Romance scholars deny their existence altogether. This seems erroneous. We know that Queen Alinora (Eleanor), the ill-famed consort of Henry II. (1154-1204), after her French divorce, was a high authority in love affairs. Schiller in The Maid of Orleans described the nature and character of such a Cour d'Amour.
It is but natural that the minne of a knight was not always smooth sailing: his springtide feelings were frequently tossed on the sea of his lady's caprice; longing and suspense, "heaven-high exultation and sadness unto death," to use Clarchen's words in Goethe's Egmont, held him in a constant state of agitation. Tannhauser charmingly satirizes woman's whims. She demands impossible things of her foolish suitor, who is ever ready to serve: she asks him to have the Rhône River flow past Nürnberg; to turn the Danube back toward the Rhine; or to build an ivory palace, wheresoever she will, in the midst of a lake; or to bring her the light of the moon; the salamander from the fire, or from Galilee the mountain upon which Adam sat; in recompense of which she will bless him with her sweet love! "If I bring her the great tree from India, or the Holy Grail, which Parsifal guarded, or the apple which Paris adjudicated to Venus, or the magic mantle which fits only faithful ladies, or the ark of Noah from which he sent the doves, she will fulfill my most ardent desires! Alas, the sharp rod was kept too far away from her when a child!"