REINMAR DER ALTE

ca. 1150–ca. 1210)

Text to WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE, Reinmar der Alte has always been viewed as the most important Middle High German courtly love poet. GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG, for instance, in hisTRISTAN(ca. 1210), laments Reinmar’s death: “the leader of them all, is thus silenced to the world” (4,478–79), and Walther von der Vogelweide, though somewhat with tongue-in-cheek, praises his great art (L. 83, 1). There might have been some rivalry between Walther and Reinmar, but this did not diminish the latter’s tremendous reputation throughout the German Middle Ages. In one of his songs Reinmar indirectly mourns the death of his patron, Duke Leopold V of Austria (1194). He himself might have originated from Austria, though Gottfried seems to locate him in Alsace (Hagenau). Reinmar was probably born between 1150 and 1160 and died before 1210. He is depicted in theManessische Liederhandschrift(ms. C, early 14th century), where he is identified with the unusual appellate “der Alte” (“the Old One”). Apart from 60 songs clearly attributable to Reinmar, there is also a considerable corpus of so-called “pseudo-Reinmar” songs. Whereas he gained greatest respect for his esoteric, spiritual love poetry (hohe Minne), those songs of questionable authenticity treat love in a much more material and erotic manner. According to recent scholarship, however, they might simply have been part of Reinmar’s repertoire, more or less repressed by 19th- and early 20thcentury scholarship.

The traditional corpus of Reinmar’sMinneliederis determined by the male voice’s emotional but ritualized suffering resulting from the distant lady who is elevated into an abstract, almost absolute state of womanhood.Women’s love appears as the ultimate reward for men’s life here in this world, but since courtly ladies are basically unapproachable, Reinmar strongly emphasizes love pains, which subsequently elevate the man to a higher ethical level.Consequently the wooer must unswervingly demonstrate loyalty and patience, and never show a sign of doubt about his lady’s triumphant virtues. This does not imply that Reinmar never even mentions the erotic goal of his wooing, as he states on several occasions that happiness and sexual fulfillment are also on his mind (nos. 14 and 15). Sometimes Reinmar resorts to the genre ofWechsel, or exchange poem, where the wooing man and his lady enter a dialogue (songs no. 2, 3, and 4). Significantly Reinmar employs women’s stanzas where he utilizes a female voice in a skillful dramatic setting. His song, “Si jehent, der sumer der sî hie” (They say that summer has arrived, song no. 16), is a widow’s lament, a song put into the mouth of the wife of the deceased Leopold V of Austria. Two songs, nos. 30 and 31, are Crusade songs in which he explores, similarly to HARTMANN VON AUE, the emotional conflict between the call of God to liberate the Holy Land and his desire to stay with his lady back home.

Apart from song no. 12, which demonstrates some textual links with a poem by GACE BRULÉ, Reinmar does not seem to have borrowed much at all from French TROUBADOUR or TROUVÈRE poets. His lyrical oeuvre represents the epitome of Middle High German courtly love poetry prior to Walther von der Vogelweide and NEIDHART, as Reinmar still pursues the absolute ideals of traditional courtliness, whereas his successors seriously began to question the esoteric concept of love advocated by Reinmar and his contemporaries.

■ Jackson, William E. “Reinmar der Alte and the Woman as Courtly Victim.” InNew Images of Medieval Women: Essays Towards a Cultural Anthropology, edited by Edelgard E. DuBruck, 73–101. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989.

■Des Minnesang Frühling. Edited by Hugo Moser and Helmut Tervooren. 38th ed. Stuttgart, Germany: Hirzel, 1988.