THE MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN PERIOD (1050-1350) The beginnings of Middle High German literature were slow and tentative after the set-back of the 1lth century. The Church had no helping hand to offer, as in the more liberal epoch of the great Charles; for, at the middle of the IIth century, when the linguistic change from Old to Middle High German was taking place, a religious asceticism, originating in the Burgundian mon astery of Cluny, cast a blight over secular poetry. Lugubrious in their asceticism are poems like Memento mori (c. Io5o), Vona Glauben, a verse commentary on the creed by a monk Hartmann (c. 1120), and verses on "the remembrance of death" (Von des todes geliugede) by Heinrich von Melk ( c. 116o). But in the Ezzolied (1063), a spirited lay by a monk of Bamberg on the life, miracles and death of Christ, and in the Annolied (c. a poem in praise of the archbishop Anno of Cologne, the tone is less monotonous.
A freer poetic spirit is to be seen, too, in the lyric poetry inspired by the Virgin, in the legends of the saints which bulk so largely in the poetry of the 12th century, and in the Kaiserchronik (c. 113o-5o), a long, confused chronicle of world history. The national sagas begin to emerge in the popular literature. To the wandering Spielleute we owe the romance of Konig Rother (c. 116o), and the kindred stories of Orendel, Oswald and Salomon and Alarkol f . These poems bear witness to the influence of the crusades; as do also the Alexanderlied (c. 113o), and Herzog Ernst (c. which point the way to the court epic. The Chanson de Roland (Rolandslied) was, about 1135, reproduced in German by Konrad of Regensburg.
The court epic begins in Germany with the Tristrant (c. 118o) of Eilhart von Oberge, and a knightly romance of Floris and Blanche flur. In these years, too, the beast epic, already repre sented by the Latin Ecbasis captivi, was reintroduced into Ger many by an Alsatian monk, Heinrich der Glichezare, who based his Reinhart Fuchs (c. on the French Roman de Renart. Lastly, the Minnesang, or lyric, burst out with extraordinary vig our in the last decades of the 12th century. Its origins are obscure, and it is debatable how much in it is indigenous and national, how much due to French and Provencal influence ; but the freshness and originality of the early South German singers, such as Kiiren berg, Dietmar von Eist, Friedrich von Hausen and Heinrich von Morungen, are not to be questioned. The satirical Spruchdichtung is represented by two poets who call themselves Herger and "Der Spervogel," and was less dependent on foreign models.
Mediaeval was the preparation for the ex traordinarily brilliant although brief epoch of German mediaeval poetry which was contemporary with the reigns of the Hohen staufen emperors, Frederick I. Barbarossa, Henry VI. and Fred erick II. National epic, court epic and Minnesang—these three types of mediaeval German literature, to which may be added as a smaller group, didactic poetry, comprise virtually all that has come down to us in Middle High German. A Middle High German prose hardly existed, and the drama, such as it was, was still essentially Latin.
The first place among the National epics belongs to the Nibe lungenlied, which received its present form in Austria about the end of the 12th century. Combining, as it does, elements from various cycles of sagas—the lower Rhenish legend of Siegfried, the Burgundian saga of Gunther and Hagen, the Gothic saga of Dietrich and Etzel—it is the representative epic of German mediaeval life. And in dramatic intensity and singleness of pur pose it is the greatest of them all. Whoever the welder of the sagas may have been, he was clearly a poet of lofty imagination and high epic gifts (see NIBELUNGENLIED). Less imposing is the second of the German national epics, Gudrun, which, as it has come down to us, is the work of an Austrian ; but the home of the saga is on the shores of the North sea. Dietrich von Bern (i.e., of Verona), or Theodoric the Great, who had been looked upon for hundreds of years by the German people as their national hero, has been celebrated in no epic comparable to the Nibelungen lied, but he appears in the background of a number of romances— Die Rabenschlacht, Dietrichs Flucht, Alpharts Tod, Biterolf and Dietlieb, Laurin, etc.—which make up what is usually called the Heldenbuch.
The court epic, or romance of chivalry, the influence of which is apparent on all these popular epics, forms the second great group of German mediaeval poetry. The poet who established the court epic in Germany was Heinrich von Veldeke, a native of the lower Rhineland; his Eneit, written between 1175 and 1186, is based on a French original. Other poets of the time, such as Herbort von Fritzlar, the author of a Liet von Troye, followed Heinrich's example, and selected French models for German poems on antique themes. With the three masters of the court epic, Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg—all of them contemporaries—the Arthurian cycle became the established theme of this type of romance, and the embodiment of the ideals of the knightly classes. Hartmann was a Swabian, Wolfram a Bavarian, Gottfried presumably a native of Strasbourg. Hartmann, in his Erec and Iwein, Gregorius and Der arme Heinrich, provided the Court epic of the age with its best models; he had, of all the mediaeval court poets, the most delicate sense of style. Wolfram and Gottfried, on the other hand, represent two extremes of poetic temperament. Wolfram's Parzi val is filled with mysticism and obscure spiritual significance; while Gottfried's Tristan is as lucid in its style as Hartmann's Iwein.
The most conspicuous changes which came over the narrative poetry of the 13th century were, on the one hand, a steady en croachment of realism on the matter and treatment of the epic, and, on the other, a tendency to didacticism. Substituting the "fact" of the chronicle for the freer imaginings of the earlier poets is to be seen in the work of Rudolf von Ems ; while the growth of realism appears in the P f a ff e Amis, a collection of comic anec dotes, the admirable peasant romance Meier Helmbrecht, written about 125o in Bavaria, and in the adventures of Ulrich von Lichtenstein (Frauendienst, I 2 55 Frauenbucli, 1257).
In a higher degree than any of these epic poets, Walther von der Vogelweide summed up in himself all that was best in the group of poetic literature with which he was associated—the Minnesang or lyric ; in love song high and low, in religious poetry, in patriotic and political Sprilche—in all he was a master. He was born about 117o and died about 12 28 ; his art he learned in Austria—he calls the elegiac poet Reinmar von Hagenau his master—whereupon he wandered through South Germany, a wel come guest wherever he went although his championship of what he regarded as the national cause in the political struggles of the day won him foes as well as friends. Of all Germany's lyric poets, he exerted the deepest influence ; and in the originality and purity of his inspiration he is one of her greatest (see WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE).
Amongst Walther's immediate contemporaries, highborn poets, whose lives were passed at courts, naturally cultivated the con ventional lyric ; but the more gifted and original singers of the time availed themselves of the freedom of Walther's poetry of uncourtly love. This was Walther's most valuable legacy to his successors, the greatest of whom was Neidhart von Reuental (c. 1180–c. 1250). Neidhart sought the themes of his Hofasche Dorf poesie in the village, and, as the mood happened to dictate, depicted the peasant with humorous banter or biting satire. The lyric poets of the later 13th century were either echoes of Walther and Neidhart, or their originality was confined to some particular form of lyric poetry in which they excelled. On the whole, the Spruchdichter came best out of the ordeal of changing fashions; and the increasing interest in the moral and didactic applications of literature favoured the development of a new form of verse. The Spruchdichtung, was in fact, the connecting link between the Minnesang of the 13th and the lyric and satiric poetry of the 15th and i6th centuries.
A utilitarian and didactic spirit was gradually taking the place of the of chivalry. In the early decades of the 13th century, Der Winsbeke, by a Bavarian, and Der welsc/ie Gast, written in 1215-16 by Thomasin von Zirclaere, a native of Friuli, still inculcate the duties and virtues of the knightly life. But in the Bescheidenheit (c. of a wandering singer, who called himself Freidank, we find for the first time an antagonism to the unworldly code of chivalry and a sign of the changing social order, brought about by the rise of what we now call the middle class. Freidank is their spokesman. In Der Renner by Hugo von Trimberg, written at the very end of the century, the terseness and wit of Freidank have given place to diffuse moralizing and allegory. There is practically no Middle High German literature in prose.