nû wizzet, liebiu muoter mîn, ich volge dem knaben werden. Liebiu muoter hêre, nách mir so klaget er sêre. sol ich im des niht danken? er spricht daz ich diu schoenest sî von Beiern unz in Vranken." This is the form of the majority of these songs. They usually open with a picture of the season; if it be spring, the poet describes the woods or the meadows in their fresh beauty, or the music of the birds : : vrô singent aber die vogele, lobent den meien. sam tuo wir den reien."2 Then follows a short romance or love adventure, graphically narrated in a sprightly dance measure. The winter songs are more serious. The dances in the "Bauernhof" do not always pass off so merrily as those under the linden; the rough peasants, whom Neidhart is always ready to satirise, dispute with him the possession of the village beauty, and the dance ends in blows. While in all this a healthy and pleasing revolt against the artificial formality of the Court poetry is to be recognised, there is, at the same time, an element of degeneration in Neidhart's lyric. Walther von der 1 "Der, den ich euch nennen will, den könnt ihr erkennen. Zu dem will ich [also] eilen; er ist genannt von Riuwental; den will ich umfangen. Es grünt an den Ästen, dass alle die Bäume davon zur Erde niederbrechen könnten. Nun wisset, liebe Mutter mein, ich folge dem teueren Jüngling. Liebe, hohe Mutter, nach mir klagt er so sehr. Soll ich ihm nicht dafür danken? Er sagt, dass ich die schönste sei von Baiern bis nach Franken" (Die Lieder Neidharts von Reuenthal, ed. F. Keinz, Leipzig, 1889, 18). Cp. K. Bartsch, L.c., 103 ff. 2" Nun ist gänzlich vergangen der Winter kalt, mit Laub wohl bedeckt der grüne Wald. Lieblich, mit süsser Stimme feierlich, froh singen wiederum die Vogel, loben den Mai. Ebenso tanzen (lit., thun) wir den Reigen" (l.c., 45). Neidhart's influence. The Tanhäuser. Steinmar, Vogelweide, who did not look upon it with favour, shows a delicacy in his songs of "niederer Minne" which is not to be found here. The fabric of Neidhart's poetry is a little coarse, and, charming as are his vignettes of summer and winter, the imagery he uses is not original. Thus Neidhart von Reuenthal does not occupy a place in the front rank of the Minnesingers; he is not even to be compared with the singers of the early Minnesang, such as Heinrich von Morungen or Reinmar von Hagenau; but he was the most gifted lyric poet of his time, and his poetry left its mark upon the German Volkslied for at least two centuries. His influence is particularly noticeable on a group of Swabian Minnesingers who wrote about the middle of the thirteenth century: in the poetry of Burkart von Hohenfels, Ulrich von Winterstetten, and, most gifted of the three, Gottfried von Neifen, there is an attempt to combine the courtly Minnesang with the later peasant poetry.1 Another poet, to whom Neidhart served as model, was "the Tanhäuser" (Tanhûser), a singer of some individuality.2 Although of noble family, the Tanhäuser evidently led the life of a Spielmann. He, too, shows a preference for dance measures, but he seems to have come under Romance influence. He imitates the French "Pastourel," a form of poetry which was more or less analogous to the German peasant lyric. But the Tanhäuser remains essentially a Spielmann, delighting in rough humour and witty satire, even when the shafts of his satire are directed against himself. The ceremonial Minnedienst fares badly at his hands: his songs proclaim more plainly than the insincerities of Ulrich von Liechtenstein that the day of the Minnedienst is past. Another satirist of the Minnesang is the poet known as Herr Steinmar, probably Steinmar von Klingenau in the Thurgau, who lived in the second half of the thirteenth century. In Steinmar's verses,3 just as in the Tanhäuser's, what appears to be satire is often merely a reflection of the change that was rapidly coming over social life. Steinmar is a "Bauerndichter," but he looks upon life from a purely democratic standpoint, adapting his poetic ideals to the solid 1 K. Bartsch, 2 K. Bartsch, 3 K. Bartsch, .c., 148 ff., 155 ff., 161 ff.; D.N.L., .c., 143 ff. .c., 239 ff.; D.N.L., I.c., 222 ff. comforts of the burgher's life, and singing the glories of autumn instead of spring. At the beginning of the fourteenth century we meet once more, and for the last time in the history of the German lyric, with a Minnesinger of the old type. This was Meister Johannes Hadlaub (Hadloub), a citizen of Zurich, and friend Johannes of Rüdiger Manesse and his son, the first collectors of Hadlaub. German Minnelieder. As a poet, Hadlaub is content to imitate; he depicts his shy, retiring love for a noble lady, and the Minnedienst in which it expressed itself, in verses that are constant echoes of the older Minnesang.1 The incongruities that strike us in Ulrich von Liechtenstein's poetry are still more conspicuous in the lyrics of this plain Zurich burgher of more than a generation later. Hadlaub also, it may be noted, wrote peasant lyrics; but it is doubtful if there was even as much sincerity behind his rustic sentiments as behind his love poetry. As a "Spruchdichter," Walther von der Vogelweide's most important successor was Reinmar von Zweter.2 This poet Reinmar was born on the Rhine about 1200, like his master learned von Zweter. his art in Austria, and lived until after the middle of the century. His "Sprüche" afford a motley commentary upon the life of his time: the burning questions of the day serve as materials for satiric or didactic treatment. There is even a slight flavour of the satire of a later age in Reinmar's attacks on erring monks, on drunkenness and gambling; but it is only a foretaste. In politics, Reinmar took up the war against the Pope where Walther had left it; but nothing demonstrates more clearly how inferior a poet Reinmar was than do these political "Sprüche." On the modern reader his poetry leaves, as a whole, an impression of monotony, for it is almost exclusively in one form, or, to use the technical expression, in one tone." 66 Although the "Spruchdichtung" was one of the few forms of Middle High German poetry which lived on until the age of the Reformation, it did not escape the universal process of decay that set in between the close of the one epoch and the beginning of the next. As an example of the 1 K. Bartsch, .c., 268 ff.; D. N.L., .c., 250 ff. ? Ed. G. Roethe, Leipzig, 1887; K. Bartsch, l.c., 173 ff., and D.N.L., .c., 166 ff. "The Marner." Later Spruchdichter. medieval Spruchdichtung in its period of decay, one poet must suffice the so-called "Marner," a Swabian, who was murdered as an old man about the year 1270. The Marner was a learned poet, who could write Latin verses as well as German, and in his Sprüche, which form the greater part of his verse, he displays wide theological and scientific knowledge. Compared with Reinmar von Zweter, his range is varied; but the variety is too often attained by sacrificing poetry to learning. In the Marner's poetry the tendency to point a moral has obtained the upper hand, and, unfortunately for the German Spruch, his example was only too faithfully imitated in the following centuries. Didacticism is the disturbing element, not only in the lyrics of minor poets, such as Meister Boppe, Rumezland and Regenbogen,2 but also in the most famous of all-Heinrich von Meissen, "the Frauenlob." Heinrich von Meissen belongs, however, to the succeeding age and to a new race of poets; he is not a Minnesinger, but the first of the Meistersingers. 1 K. Bartsch, l.c., 179 ff. 2 K. Bartsch, l.c., 220, 226, 283. 133 CHAPTER VIII. DIDACTIC POETRY AND PROSE. An unconscious and unexpressed belief in "art for art's sake" is apparent in the best decades of Middle High German literature as in all great literary periods. The unreflecting singers who sang their own love-songs or told their tales of chivalry did not consider too carefully means and ends; they only thought of how they could communicate to their hearers or readers the pleasure they themselves felt. But as reflection gradually took the place of naïveté, and the didactic spirit began to assert itself, the unreasoning idealism of the old art disappeared. The encroachment of this spirit upon The didMiddle High German poetry was one of the earliest indications of its decay. Didacticism was, however, more than a purely literary or intellectual phenomenon; it was associated with a change that was coming over the whole structure of medieval society-namely, that brought about by the rise of the middle classes. The high-minded, aristocratic knight. had to give place to the practical burgher, whose life was made up of petty interests and cares, with whom even religion assumed a sternly practical and moral aspect. actic spirit and the rise of the middle classes. Among the early literature of this didactic nature may be noted a Tugendlehre, a collection of moral apothegms from the Latin classics, translated into German by a Thuringian churchman, Wernher von Elmdorf, and a German version of Wernher the distichs which, in the middle ages, passed for Cato's in- Elmdorf. struction of his son: for centuries these Disticha Catonis en- The Disjoyed popularity as a school-book. More important than ticha either of these works is the so-called Winsbeke,1 written 1 Ed. M. Haupt, Leipzig, 1845; Didaktik aus der Zeit der Kreuzzüge, bearbeitet von H. Hildebrand (D.N.L., 9 [1888]), 151 ff. von Catonis. Der |