Courtly romance, a new narrative form in the 12th century, was the major vehicle for Middle High German Classicism. The earliest courtly narratives were “romances of antiquity.” They show Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, and Aeneas behaving like 12th-century chivalric knights, fighting boldly but with noble restraint on horseback with lances, wondering in long inner monologues whether they can win the love of their ladies, and writing them love letters and poems. The northern German poet Heinrich von Veldeke produced the Eneide (c. 1170; written in an intermediate dialect that contained elements of both Low and High German), a “modern” version of Virgil’s Aeneid adapted from the anonymous Old French Roman d’Énéas. It turns on the two loves of Aeneas—one passionate and destructive (Dido); the other chaste, courtly, and the foundation of family and empire (Lavinia). The Trojan War was another popular theme from antiquity.
But the tales received from the ancient world paled before the wild popularity of the figure of King Arthur and his knights (see Arthurian legend). Arthurian romance in the wake of its great inventor, the French poet Chrétien de Troyes, overwhelmed other contenders for dominance of narrative poetry. Hartmann von Aue
A Swabian knight, poet, theoretician of love, and writer of Minnesang (courtly love lyrics), Hartmann von Aue was the first to bring the new tales of King Arthur to Germany. He adapted and translated into elegant Middle High German verses two of Chrétien’s romances: Erec (c. 1180–85), from Érec et Énide, and Iwein (c. 1200), from Yvain; ou, le chevalier au lion. These works created a new structure for narrative and with it a new conception of the destiny of the hero: his education and gradual achievement of ethical perfection through making amends for shameful conduct, expunging guilt, resisting temptation, and avoiding behaviour conducive to tragic failure. Erec is the tale of a knight’s quest to repair his reputation, damaged when he neglects his duties as knight to spend all his time with his bride. In Iwein a great knight falls from grace by disregarding a seemingly trivial deadline. Denounced before King Arthur’s court by his wife, Iwein loses his mind and is reduced to living naked and wild in the forest. Restored by a magic salve and accompanied by a lion whom he has helped fight a dragon, he sets out on a series of grand chivalric undertakings, rescuing the helpless and those unjustly accused. Eventually, his acts of justice and compassion bring about a reconciliation with his wife.
The obsession with guilt expunged and shame overcome found its most poignant expression in Hartmann’s two “chivalric legends,” Gregorius (c. 1185–95) and Der arme Heinrich (c. 1195; “Poor Henry”). Gregorius is a chivalric-Christian adaptation of the Oedipus story, a tale of double incest in which the tragic hero, born from an incestuous union and later wed to his own mother, is raised to the position of pope after 17 years of suicidal penance for his sins as knight and lover. “Poor Henry,” a wealthy, virtuous, and famous knight, is stricken with leprosy and loses his possessions and standing. The only medicine that can cure his disease is the blood of a virgin willing to sacrifice herself for him. The youngest daughter of the family that takes him in at once offers herself and refuses to take no for an answer. Ultimately her sacrifice is rejected and the will accepted in place of the deed. Miraculously cured, the grand lord marries the young peasant girl.
Hartmann’s elegant simplicity and his gentle, noble sentimentality were greatly admired both in his own time and since. (Selections from his works can be found in English translation in The Narrative Works of Hartmann von Aue, 1983.) His younger contemporary, Gottfried von Strassburg, crowned him with the laurel wreath and praised him extravagantly. No less an author than Thomas Mann admired Hartmann’s legends of great sin and profound forgiveness; his late novel Der Erwählte (1951; The Holy Sinner) adapts Hartmann’s Gregorius. Wolfram von Eschenbach
The high point of Classical Middle High German literature is the work of the two great literary rivals Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg. Wolfram presents himself as an unlearned, rough-cut genius:
I am Wolfram von Eschenbach, and I know a thing or two about poetry.…I was born to knighthood, and any woman who lovesme for my writing instead of my boldness must be weak in her wits.…I don’t know a single letter of the alphabet.
Gottfried, the elegant, highly educated humanist-courtier poet, classified Wolfram as a teller of wild stories persuasive to “dull minds.” Wolfram’s style is eccentric and brilliant. His works, with a high ethical seriousness at their core, are full of a robust humour that can shade into the grotesque.
Wolfram adapted his major work, Parzival, from Chrétien de Troyes’s unfinished Perceval; ou, le conte du graal (Percevaclass="underline" The Tale of the Grail) and completed it about 1205. He also wrote a long fragment of a heroic legend (chanson de geste, or “song of heroic deeds”), Willehalm, and two short fragments called Titurel, a spin-off from the Grail story begun in Parzival. (Wolfram probably stopped working on Willehalm and Titurel at some time after 1217.) In addition to these works, he composed a number of lyric poems.
Parzival has been compared with Dante’s Divine Comedy and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust. It is a kind of summation of the human condition in its 12th-century embodiment: the sinful knight questing to reconcile the demands of God with those of life in the world. Parzival is the simpleton with a grand destiny. He becomes king of the Grail castle and overcomes his youthful sins by steadfastly loving his wife, by learning discipline, compassion, and courtesy, and by remaining loyal to his own human destiny as knight and fighter. In fact, Parzival seems to reiterate the parable of the prodigal son: the good man who has sinned and fallen into doubt of God (zwîvel) is the candidate for grace. Parzival shares with Goethe’s Faust the idea that the very effort to perfect flawed human nature has redemptive power. The work contains a grand symbol of this obligation to maintain life and destiny, raised to the level of a religious symboclass="underline" the Holy Grail. Parzival becomes king of the Grail by remaining a knight and loyal husband. In this he is an answer to Hartmann’s Gregorius, who could find redemption only in complete renunciation of his human identity. Wolfram’s Parzival is a rejection of ascetic Christian values and a grand confirmation of the worth of life in this world. Gottfried von Strassburg