Christian Singers of Germany

The Minne-songs, which form a purely lyrical poetry, were soon followed by poems of the narrative and didactic class. Early in this same thirteenth century the Nibelungen-Lied received its present 54 shape; and the old legends, some like this taken from the heathen times, others of purely Christian origin, became the favourite subjects of the poets. The stories of Tristram, Percival, and the quest of the Holy Grail--knightly romances and histories of saints that were half mystical and symbolical, half legendary--must have filled the imaginations of youths and ladies in those days as novels do in ours. Most of these stories were connected with that circle of legends of which King Arthur and his Round Table form the centre, and were thus derived from a foreign, generally from a French or Provençal source, but their treatment was entirely German. It soon betrays two opposite tendencies, one of which takes up the external side of these romances, that of love of adventure and worldly success; while the other brings into relief their religious element and the development of character, and anticipates in the latter respect somewhat of the characteristics of the modern novel. Of these schools the representative types are Gottfried von Strasburg and Wolfram von Eschenbach. The former chose for the subject of his longest poem the story of Tristram and Iseult, and makes it the vehicle of depicting the knightly life of his own times on its most stirring and fascinating side. The latter selects the quest of the Holy Grail by Sir Percival, and embodies in his poem those grave and high conceptions of knightly duty and religious faith, which characterise the more serious thought of his day. Wolfram von Eschenbach was a Bavarian by birth, of ancient and noble family, but being a younger son, he possessed but little worldly wealth, and seems to have led a wandering life, 55 welcome as knight and poet alike at the German courts and castles. From the frequent allusions in his principal poem to the court of Thuringia, he no doubt formed one of the band of knights, poets, and adventurers, who gathered round the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia, and made that little court at once brilliant and disturbed. Wolfram's lifetime coincided with the brightest period of the German Empire under the Hohenstauffens, for he was born under Frederick Barbarossa, and died under Frederick II. German chivalry was then at its highest point, and religious fervour was kindled to enthusiasm by the Crusades; thus it is but natural that these should form the moving springs of his romance.