Walther von der Vogelweide

Tirol appears to be his place of birth and had become a center of poetry and art. It was here that the young poet learned his craft under the renowned master Pemmar the Old, whose death he afterwards lamented in two of his most beautiful lyrics.

In 1198 began the dissesions as to the succession to the Imperial crown; and Walter attached himself to Philip of Suabia, in opposition to the papal faction, which supported Otho. To this period applies one of the longest of his songs, a sort of Jeremiad on the troubles of his country, which he opens by circumstantially describing himself in the position in which he is drawn in the Manesse MS., seated upon a rock, resting one knee on the other, with the elbow resting on the uppermost, and the hand covering the chin and one cheek. He proceeds, in a strain of great boldness and considerable poetic merit, to descant on the causes of the existing troubles, and particularly on the part borne in them by Rome.

The next historical piece is a song of triumph on the coronation of Philip, in 1198, at Mentz, where he appears to have been present. He takes the opportunity of giving very judicious advice to the new Emperor for consolidating his government by a liberal policy; and fortifies his counsel by the examples of the generous Saladin, and his rival Richard Coeur de Lion. In many of the subsequent songs we find allusions to the evils which intestine war and the intrigues of the papal court had brought upon Germany; and our poet is every where the staunch advocate and defender of the national interest and honour.

We soon after find him commemorating the marriage which was celebrated at Magdeburg in 1207 between Philip and a Grecian princess:
"... eins Keisers bruder und eins Keisers kint."
"A Caesar's brother and a Caesar's child."

The bride he describes as --
"Rose ane dorn, ein tube sunder gallen."
"A thornless rose, a gall-less dove."

Walter's life was completely that of a wanderer. The geige and the harp were both his accompaniers. He pursued his way on horseback; and when we contemplate the great extent of this itinerancy, we need not be surprised that the poetry and romance of these countries were so widely diffused, even under so many apparent restraints on free communication. -- "From the Elbe to the Rhine, and thence to Hungary, had he," as he says, "surveyed. From the Seine to the Mur, from the Po to the Drave, had he learned the customs of mankind:" yet he ends with a patriotic eulogium on the excellence of his native land, on the good-breeding of the men, and the angel-forms of the women :--

"Tiutsche man sint wol gezogen,
Als engel sint diu wib getan," &c.

The court of Herman Landgrave of Thuringia is his next resting-place; and we are not surprised to see our poet at a spot which has been already noticed as the great fostering-place of the Minnesinging art. Here, in 1207, was the famous battle or poetic contention of Wartburg, at which Walter is placed as a principal character; and we find him rejoicing in one of his songs at his good fortune in having entered the service of Landgrave, "the flower that shines through the snow." There are several of our author's pieces which belong to this period of his life, and are more or less interesting, as referring to his companions at the court, to its customs, and even jokes. Many of them are devoted to the inculcation of moral and knightly virtue, often of a highly liberal and philosophic, and not unfrequently of a religious and devotional, turn.

We next find him engaging in the controversy between Otho and Frederic, the rivals for the Imperial crown. He draws a poetic comparison between the merits and pretensions of the two candidates, siding himself with Frederic. Soon after, he appears at the court of Vienna, under the patronage of Leopold VII.; and we find him addressing that prince among others, in a very plaintive appeal.

"Mir ist verspert der selden tor,
Da sten ich als ein weise vor,"&c.

"To me is barr'd the door of joy and ease,"etc.

If no better fortune ensued, we need not wonder at finding Walter soon after seeking protection in Carinthia at the court of duke Barnard, with whom (though a known patron of song, and generously disposed towards our author,) a misunderstanding arose, which is detailed in one song, and alluded to in others. Other singers were there: he complains that he was misunderstood, or perhaps parodied (verkehrt), by them; and he very soon returned to Vienna. Leopold was engaging in a crusade destined against the Moors in Spain; but afterwards, in 1217, set out for the Holy Land, and appeared at the siege of Damietta. He returned home before the siege was finished; and this return is the subject of congratulation in one of the poet's songs, which, to say the truth however, is somewhat susceptible, and perhaps designedly so, of that double construction of which he complained in Carinthia.

"Ir sit wol wert das wir die glogen gegen iu luten,
Dringen und schowen, als ein wunder komen si," &c.

"Worthy art thou, returning home, the bell," etc.

The devastation, intestine disturbances, and calamities that followed the death of Leopold are historical facts; and they fix the period of a song of lamentation by our poet, in which he boldly personifies the court of Vienna, and makes it address to himself a bitter lamentation over the wreck of its greatness. The times were indeed rapidly growing worse for men of Walter's mood and habits; and well might he exclaim, in reflecting on the brighter days of courtly patrongage, --

"Hie vor do was diu welt so schöne,
Nu ist si worden also höne,"&c.

"The world was once so beautiful,
And now so desolate and dull."

This seems to be the period, too, which we must assign another and one of the most interesting of his pieces, addressed to Frederick II., in which he sighs for a home and fireside of his own, as a resting-place from his wanderings.

"Gerne wolde ich, möhte es sin, bi eigenem fúr erwarmen,"&c.

"Fain (could it be) would I a home obtain,
And warm me by a hearth-side of my own."etc.

The next song announces the fulfilment of his wishes; and he thus breaks forth in a burst of gratitude to "the noble king, the generous king," for his bounty :--

"Up, then, dance we to the song,
Care, for ever be thou gone!" etc.

Walter had promised, as we have seen, to turn his thoughts to fields and flowers and the ladies' charms, when once he should be placed in ease and repose; and here, therefore, may be properly noticed his lighter pieces, of which there are a great many, though, perhaps, gaiety is not so much a distinguishing characteristic with him as with some others of the Minnesingers. He indeed has said of himself --

"Ich bin einer der nie halben tac
Mit ganzen froeiden hat vertriben,"&c.

"A mournful one am I, above whose head
A day of perfect bliss hath never past;"etc.

Of love he has always the highest conception, as of a principle of action, a virtue, a religious affection: and in his estimation of female excellence he is below none of his contemporaries. The next series of historical allusions marks Walter as engaging in the dissensions between Frederick II. and the Pope, previous to and during the crusade undertaken by that monarch. In all his pieces of this class, the poet is the sturdy exposer of the crafty policy of the see of Rome, and of the mischiefs which had resulted from investing the church with political power. He laughs at that strange blending of spiritual and temporal interests and feelings, which produced an anomalous herd, as he observes, of "preaching knights and fighting priests;" but he is nevertheless a warm exhorter to what he considers Christian duty of engaging in the holy wars. The circumstances under which his patron Frederick was placed must, in truth, have often excited strong conflicts of feeling, especially in those of his subjects who, while they resisted the pretensions of the Pope, conscientiously believed in the duty of engaging in that expedition which it was the pretended object of the ecclesiastical proceedings to enforce; and who must often have doubted whether that prince was not neglecting, or at any rate unreasonably postponing, a sacred Christian obligation.

Many of Walter's songs are of an exceedingly bold character, as opposed to the pretensions of the see of Rome; and that, not on merely political grounds, nor on objections to the moral character or present proceedings of its members; but on the broadest principles of resistance to priestly usurpation, well becoming the land which was to be the cradle of the Reformation. It has been already observed to what an extent Frederick II. and his political chancellor encouraged a literary and poetic taste as inimical to the encroachments of superstition. Many of the earliest poets of Southern France are also more or less associated with heretical notions and practices; and there is an old tradition (unsupported indeed by direct historic evidence, but still curious as a sort of evidence of prevailing reputation), that the twelve real or imaginary "masters" or founders of song in Germany, were formally accused of heresy before the Emperor, and compelled to defend themselves in an open assembly in the presence of the Pope's legate.

Walter himself performed that duty which he enjoined so strongly on others; and though no precise date can be assigned to his expedition to the Holy Land, there seems every probability that he accompanied Frederick II. about the year 1228. One song seems written from the ranks of the holy army, on his passage, while full of zeal and hope; and another breathes a full strain of joy and exultation at finding himself among those scenes which Scriptural recollections and religious associations rendered so dear and sacred. Proud indeed must have been the poet's triumph in bowing with his great patron at the tomb of his Saviour, once again redeemed from the hands of the Infidels by the prince whom ti had been the delight of the church to traduce and vilify.

We have now traced our Minnesinger through thirty eventful years, by the details which his works afford; and it appears from the same evidence, that he continued to indulge his poetical taste for some years more. "Forty years and more," says he, "have I sung of love:" and it seems clear that he attained an advanced age, little blest by the gifts of fortune, but with an increasing ardour in his country's cause, and a more earnest inculcation of the precepts of religion, which he often enforced in strains of earnest devotional feeling. One of his last efforts appears to be his dialogue with "the world," in which he takes his leave of its cares and vanities :--

Too well thy weakness have I proved;
Now would I leave thee;-- it is time...
Good night! to thee, oh world, good night!
I haste me to my home.

Where Walter spent the latter part of his life subsequently to his expedition to the Holy Land, does not appear; probably he remained abroad -- perhaps was detained somewhere on his journey home, -- at all events it was after a long absence, and in his old age, that he returned to his native land. The feelings with which he revisited the scenes of his youth are expressed in a plaintive song, which commences thus :--

"Ah! where are hours departed fled?"

The poet concludes his song by lamenting that circumstances (probably his poverty and infirmities) prevented him from returning to the Holy Land, to crown his days with that everlasting reward which the swords of younger and more favoured competitors were enabled to earn.

An ancient MS. preserves the tradition that Walter's mortal remains were deposited beneath a tree in the precincts of the minster at Wurtzburg; that by his will he directed the birds to be statedly fed upon his tomb; and that the following epitaph thus commemorated his name and talents:--

"Vogelweide's Epitaph"

Pascua qui volucrum vivus, Walthere, fuisti,
Qui flos eloquii, qui Palladis os, obiisti!
Ergo quod aureolam probitas tua possit habere,
Qui legit, hic dictat -- "Deus istius miserere!"