Walther von der Vogelweide
Portrait of Walther von der
Vogelweide. From the Codex Manesse
(Folio 124r).
born c. 1170
died c. 1230, Würzburg? [Germany]
greatest German lyric poet of the Middle
Ages, whose poetry emphasizes the
virtues of a balanced life, in the
social as in the personal sphere, and
reflects his disapproval of those
individuals, actions, and beliefs that
disturbed this harmony. He was no
respecter of persons: whoever came
between him and his ideals, even the
pope himself, received the full force of
his anger.
The place of Walther’s birth has
never been satisfactorily identified,
though the title hêr, which he is given
by other poets, indicates that he was of
knightly birth. It is clear from his
poetry that he received a formal
education at a monastery school. He
learned the techniques of his art at the
Viennese court of Leopold V, duke of
Austria; but, when one of the latter’s
successors, Leopold VI, took up
residence in Vienna, Walther failed to
win his favour (for reasons perhaps
connected with his rivalry with Reinmar
von Hagenau, the most sophisticated of
the earlier minnesingers, who was
resident at the Viennese court).
Instead, he gained the patronage of the
Hohenstaufen Philip of Swabia, by
writing in support of the Hohenstaufen
cause against the Welf faction during
their struggle for the kingship
following the emperor Henry VI’s death
in 1197. Pope Innocent III came out on
behalf of the Welfs, and from this time
dates the antipapal feeling that runs
through much of Walther’s political
poetry.
Disappointed with Philip’s treatment
of him, however, Walther then served
several masters until, in 1212, he once
more entered the political arena—this
time in support of the Welf emperor Otto
IV against Innocent III. Again he was
not treated with the generosity he
expected, and, in the same year, when
Frederick II reclaimed the throne for
the house of Hohenstaufen, Walther
turned to welcome the new ruler, who was
crowned in 1215. From him he received a
small fief, symbol of the security he
had so long desired. Two 14th-century
records suggest that it was in the see
of Würzburg, and it is likely that he
spent the rest of his life there.
Rather more than half of the 200 or
so of Walther’s poems that are extant
are political, moral, or religious; the
rest are love poems. In his religious
poems he preached the need for man
actively to meet the claims of his
Creator by, for instance, going on
pilgrimage or on crusade; in his
moral-didactic poems he praises such
human virtues as faithfulness,
sincerity, charity, and
self-discipline—virtues that were not
especially prominent in his own life. As
a love poet he developed a fresh and
original treatment of the situations of
courtly love and, ultimately, in such
poems as the popular “Unter der Linden,”
achieved a free, uninhibited style in
which the poses of court society gave
way before the natural affections of
village folk.
