Konrad von Würzburg

Konrad von Würzburg (c.1220-1230 – 31 August 1287)[1] was the chief German poet of the second half of the 13th century.

For other uses, see Konrad von Würzburg (disambiguation).
Portrait of Konrad von Würzburg from the Codex Manesse (folio 383r).

As with most epic poets of the age, little is known of his life, and his origin is disputed. There have been German scholars and local patriots of Würzburg who claimed he hailed from Würzburg.[2] Wilhelm Wackernagel on the other hand contends that Konrad was from Basel, as the house he owned was called the "House of Wirzburg", meaning he was named "Würzburg" not after a city, but after a house.[2] He seems to have spent part of his life in Strasbourg and his later years in Basel, where he died.[1] Like his master, Gottfried von Strassburg, but unlike most other poets from the time, Würzburg did not belong to the nobility. His varied and voluminous literary work is comparatively free from the degeneration which set in so rapidly in Middle High German poetry during the 13th century.[3]

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, "[h]is style, although occasionally diffuse, is dignified in tone; his metre is clearly influenced by Gottfried's tendency to relieve the monotony of the epic-metre with ingenious variations, but it is always correct; his narratives—if we except Die halbe Birn, of which the authorship is doubtful—are free from coarseness, to which the popular poets at this time were prone, and, although mysticism and allegory bulk largely in his works, they were not allowed, as in so many of his contemporaries, to usurp the place of poetry."[3]

Würzburg wrote a number of legends (Alexius, Silvester, Pantaleon) illustrating Christian virtues and dogma; Der Welt Lohn, a didactic allegory on the familiar theme of Frau Welt, the woman beautiful in front, but unsightly and loathsome from behind. Die goldene Schmiede is a panegyric of the Virgin Mary; the Klage der Kunst, an allegorical defence of poetry.[3] Herzmaere is an story on the eaten heart.[4] It tells of the relationship between a knight and married noblewoman who had a jealous husband.[4] After the knight died during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land his squire attempted to deliver the knight's heart to his lover.[4] The husband saw the squire before, ordered the heart to be prepared in a tasty manner and gave it to his wife, the lover of the knight.[4] When she became aware of the whole story, she died.[4]

His most ambitious works are two enormously long epics, Der trojanische Krieg[5] (consisting of more than 40,000 verses, and unfinished) and Partenopier und Meliur, both of which are based on French originals. Würzburg's talents are best showcased however in his shorter verse romances, such as Engelhart und Engeltrut, Kaiser Otto and Das Herzemaere; the latter, the theme of which has been made familiar to modern readers by Uhland in his Kastellan von Coucy, is one of the best poems of its kind in Middle High German literature.[3]

There is no complete collection available of Würzburg's works. Some examples are:

  • Der trojanische Krieg was edited by A von Keller for the Stuttgart Literarische Verein (1858)
  • Partonopier und Meliur, by K Bartsch (1871)
  • Die goldene Schniede and Silvester, by W Grimm (1840 and 1841)
  • Alexius, by HF Massmann (1843) and R Haczynski (1898)
  • Der Welt Lohn, by F Roth (1843)
  • Engelhart und Engeltrut, by Moritz Haupt (1844, 2nd ed., 1890)
  • Klage der Kunst, by E Joseph (1885).[3]

The shorter poems, Otto and Herzemaere, can be found in Erzählungen und Schwänke des Mittelalters, edited by H Lambel (2nd ed., 1883). Later German translations of Würzburg's most popular poems were published by K Pannier and H Kruger in Reclams Universalbibliothek (1879-1891).[3]

On Würzburg see F Pfeiffer in Germania, iii (1867), and W Goither in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. 44 (1898), s.v. Würzburg, Konrad von.[3]

References
  1. Randel Don (1996). The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music. Harvard University Press. p. 460. ISBN 978-0-674-37299-3.
  2. Werthmüller, Hans (2013-12-11). Tausend Jahre Literatur in Basel (in German). Springer-Verlag. p. 46. ISBN 978-3-0348-6561-6.
  3. Chisholm 1911.
  4. Werthmüller, Hans (2013-12-11). Tausend Jahre Literatur in Basel (in German). Springer-Verlag. pp. 48–49. ISBN 978-3-0348-6561-6.
  5. Konrad (von Würzburg) (1858). Der trojanische Krieg (in German). Litterarischer Verein. p. 9.
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