Walter von der Vogelweide Biography

Dromo's Den

WALTHER von der VOGELWEIDE, (c.1165-c.1230). A Middle High German minnesinger. Under Reinmar der Alte Walther learned the art of Minnesong (see MINNESINGER) at Vienna, where he seems to have remained till the confusion that followed the death of the German Emperor Henry VI in 1197 and of the Austrian Duke Frederick the Catholic in 1198, made him a wandering singer. Walther became a partisan of Philip, Duke of Swabia, who had been chosen King in March, 1198. After Philip's assassination (1208) he was for a while in the service of the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia, and he was influenced deeply by St. Elizabeth of Hungary. By his songs he continued to influence the art and politics of his time, till at length Frederick II, in recognition of his services to the German national cause, granted him an estate near Würzburg (1220) . It was for this Emperor's long postponed Crusade that Walther wrote (c.1227) his noble Kreuzlied. He may have taken part in the Crusade of 1227-28. He died at Würzburg, where his grave is still shown. In his poetry Walther passed from a period of introspective analysis, through a protest against the artistic conventions of traditional Minnesong to a virile criticism of literary sentimentality and social degeneracy, so that his maturer work is prevailingly ethical, politically or religiously didactic. His patriotism was broadly German. He appears at his best in the Sprüche, models of didactic compactness. But he is also a master of the pure lyric. Of these Unter der Linden an der heide is the most noted. His opponents called him a demagogue, and he certainly was a political agitator of unflinching courage, but he was also Germany's greatest lyric poet before Goethe.

Walther's Works are edited by Lachmann (Berlin, 1827), Wackernagel and Rieger (Giessen; 1862), Pfeiffer (Leipzig, 1864), Paul (Halle, 1882), and Wilmanns (ib., 1883) . There are modern German versions by Simrock (Berlin, 1833), Schröter (Jena, 1881), and Menzel (Plauen, 1888); and Lives by Uhland (Stuttgart, 1822), Menzel (Leipzig, 1865), Wilmanns (Bonn, 1882), Schönbach (Berlin, 1895), Burdach (Leipzig, 1900); Hentschel (Vienna, 1908). Consult the Bibliography by W. Leo (i.e., Baron von Lütgendorf) (Vienna, 1880), and Hornig, Glossariun, (Quedlinburg, 1844).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 304.