Department of Modern Languages

Society for
Medieval German Studies Newsletter and Reviews

Nr. 14, Spring 2002

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Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We are pleased to inform you of the three sessions on "New Research in Medieval German Studies" granted to SMGS for Kalamazoo 2002. It is our hope that the "New Books Round Table" will again provide an interesting evening program to discuss a new contribution to our field. This year's book will be Arthurian romances, tales, and lyric poetry: the complete works of Hartmann von Aue, translated by Frank Tobin, Kim Vivian, and Richard H. Lawson. Pennsylvania State, 2001. 329p. ISBN 0-271-02111-X

After the New Research III session on Thursday afternoon, 2 May, there will a brief business meeting to reflect on this past year's activities and decide the course that SMGS will take during the coming year.

SMGS was successful again in having all requested sessions and the "New Books Round Table" approved in Kalamazoo for 2002. The three sessions on "New Research in Medieval German Studies" are as follows:

New Research in Medieval German Studies I
Organizer: Susanne Hafner (The University of Texas at Austin)
Presider: Edward R. Haymes (Cleveland State University)

1) "Monstrous Mates: The Case of Kriemhild and Gudrun"
Ray Wakefield/Kaaren Grimstad (University of Minnesota)

2) "Siegfried as a ministerial?
Evidence from the Handschrift A of the Nibelungenlied"
Shawn Boyd (The University of Massachusetts at Amherst)

3) "Der von Kürenberg: How to Charm a Lady"
Douglas Simms (The University of Texas at Austin)

[Session 38, Schneider Auditorium, Thursday, 2 May, 10:00 a.m.]

New Research in Medieval German Studies II
Organizer: Susanne Hafner (The University of Texas at Austin)
Presider: Monika Schausten (The University of Illinois at Chicago)

1) "Enikel's Resisting Women"
Kathleen J. Meyer (Bemidji State University)

2) "Margareta Ebner's 'Revelations':
Rhetoric of Femininity and the Autobiographical Pact"
Susanne Bürkle (Universität zu Köln)

3) "Men as Other: Male Appearance in the Dominican Sister Books"
Rebecca LR Garber (Independent Scholar)

[Session 96 Fetzer 1060, Thursday, 2 May, 1:30 p.m.]

New Research in Medieval German Studies III
Organizer: Susanne Hafner (The University of Texas at Austin)
Presider: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Fort Hays State University)

1) "About the Origin of Hartmann's 'additional list' of Knights of the Round Table in his Erec, 1666-1693"
Christoph Steppich (Texas A&M University)

2) "diu riterliche maget, Lunete: Gender Ambiguity
in Hartmann von Aue's Iwein"
Evelyn Meyer (University of Minnesota)

3) "Poetic Ambiguities in Hartmann's Iwein;
Normative juridical time and 'subjective' notions of speed * a counter discourse?"
Barbara Nitsche (Universität zu Köln)

[Session 157 Fetzer 2020, Thursday, 2 May, 3:30 p.m.]

On behalf of SMGS, I would like to thank all who submitted abstracts for consideration by our Executive Committee.There were a number of excellent abstracts that regrettably could not be included for thematic reasons, date of submission, and the consensus from last year's Business Meeting to limit sessions to three papers each. Abstracts that can not be added to the SMGS program are recommended for other sessions.

New Books Round Table:
Teaching Hartman

This well-received event gives all interested scholars the opportunity to meet with the authors of recent books in medieval German studies to discuss new research and contributions in a personal, informal setting.
This year's Roundtable will be Thursday, 2 May, 8:00 p.m., in Fetzer 1060.
The meeting will include a Reception with Cash Bar.

Organizer: Susanne Hafner (University of Texas at Austin)
Moderator: Ernst Ralf Hintz (Fort Hays State University)

Participants: Stephen M. Carey (Emory University)
Joseph M. Sullivan (University of Oklahoma)

Our book this year is by Hartmann von Aue,
translated by Frank Tobin, Kim Vivian, Richard H. Lawson:
Arthurian romances, tales, and lyric poetry: the complete works of Hartmann von Aue, Pennsylvania State UP, 2001. ISBN 0-271-02111-X

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New Contributions to the Field by SMGS Members

The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia,
edited by Francis G. Gentry, Winder McConnell, Ulrich Müller,
and Werner Wunderlich,
New York: Routledge, 2002. p375. ISBN 0-8153-1785-9

with contributions by numerous SMGS members:

Ernst S. Dick, Ruth H. Firestone, John Flood, Francis G. Gentry, Will Hasty,
Edward R. Haymes, Ernst Ralf Hintz, Sibylle Jefferis, Sidney Johnson,
Winder McConnell, Ulrich Müller, Brian O. Murdoch,
Siegrid Schmidt, Britta Simon, Margarete Springeth,
Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, Robert Sullivan,
Victor Udwin, Ray Wakefield, James K. Walter,
Werner Wunderlich

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SMGS Review
Of
The Saxon Mirror: A Sachenspiegel of the 14th Century
Translated by Maria Dobozy
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999
By
Charles G. Nelson
Tufts University (emeritus)

This volume appears in The Middle Ages Series of the University of Pennsylvania Press. It offers a translation of the whole of Cod. Guelf.3.1 Aug. 2 ° which, in addition to a recension of the Sachsenspiegel, includes the text of the Imperial Landpeace of Mainz, two prologues, a table of contents, and a topical index to the law text. To assist the reader with this material, the translator has supplied an introduction, notes, an index, and a glossary.

The Saxon Mirror is a singularly important example of the numerous speculum texts making their appearance in Europe in the 14th century. It belongs to a subset of these called "law books" (Rechtsbücher), which are privately sponsored summaries or compilations of customary laws. They lacked statutory authority but were enormously influential in the practice of non-learned law in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and to the East. It is divided into two principal parts: the Landrecht, or territorial law, records those customs affecting the daily life of rural communities inhabiting the territory east of the Harz mountains and the judicial processes affecting them; the Lehnrecht, or feudal (literally "fief") law involves the same territory but limits itself to rules regarding the disposition of fiefs between overlords and vassals.

The manuscript count for the Saxon Mirror including fragments reached approximately 460 by the advent of printing. It is believed that its author, Eike von Repgow (ca. 1180-1235), completed the translation of his original Latin customary into (Elbe-Eastfalian) German between 1220 and 1235. Neither of these manuscripts is extant. Of a presumed seven illustrated manuscripts, four made in the 14th century remain. One of these, the Wolfenbüttel Sachsenspiegel, named after the place where it is now preserved, is the basis for Maria Dobozy's translation. As she points out in her introduction (35), it is a recension with a representative text, is accompanied by illustrations, and is available in a facsimile edition. She has thus made accessible a book important for "historical, linguistic, art historical, and cultural studies." (Intro., 35)

Dobozy points out that her translation is based directly on the manuscript in keeping with current thinking on the value of print editions, facsimiles aside of course. It is worth pointing out that the celebrated translations made in the early 1960's by A.T. Hatto of Tristan and the Nibelungenlied were based on the editions of Friedrich Ranke and Karl Bartsch. Eike's translators (there are several into German) are confronted with a bewildering free-associating style, long rambling sentences, and an archaic legal vocabulary. In striving successfully for a translation that was as literal as possible and still readable, Dobozy manages to convey a sense of the alterity of this 14th-century book. To explicate its strangeness she provides a 40-page introduction, copious footnotes, and a glossary of legal terms.

The introduction is designed to prepare readers to engage intelligently with the text by supplying them with a profile of the author, an explanation of what a "mirror" book is, a summary by topics of its content, and its reception history. This material is based on wide reading of secondary sources in medieval German legal history. The bibliography with only a few exceptions lists the work of German legal historians. What virtually all of these historians share, and this is duly reflected in this introduction, is a presumption of a prevailing innocence of this law book as a historical document. As one of that community told this reviewer, apparently troubled by this stance, "I have to believe my sources." A question which might have been raised here is whether representations in the law book correspond unproblematically with current praxis regarding administrative and substantive law (unlike England and France, Germany has no court records to tell us what actually transpired in court cases), the organization of village life, etc. The possibility that it is at least at certain points as much Wunsch- as Spiegelbild is suggested not only by post-modern historiography but by the contemporary colophon to the Oldenburg Sachsenspiegel (1336) itself where we are told the patron's motive was not to make new law, but to provide a standard reference for the benefit of a new generation of nobles ignorant of the old customs and who, we may infer, must themselves have been making the new law he would not include in his book.

The summary of the law by topics is especially useful. For example, all the passages of the law touching on women are identified and accompanied by some interpretive remarks. (27) There is a passing comment on the illustrations, although they lie outside the scope of this volume-concluding, "… art historians do not yet fully understand how these images relate to the text." (33) These images have not yet entered mainstream art history, although one senior art historian, Madeline Caviness, has begun to publish on them from an approach not previously taken by the German scholarship.

For the non-specialist reader of this translation--and most readers are likely to be in this category--the excellent, cross-referenced glossary locating terms in the text is indispensable to understanding the law. Underlying Dobozy's skill in translating these arcane terms is a considerable amount of research in the history of medieval law. For example, the entires under "Schöffe" (wisely left in German) and "outlawry," are followed with a long explanatory paragraph. Minor quibbles here: the entry after "court" would have benefited from the inclusion of the ecclesiastical (Episcopal, dean's, archpriest's) and secular (count's, Schultheiss's, local district judge"s) courts (68). "Lipgeding," generally means "life estate;" when it applies to a widow's right to hold tenancy in her deceased husband's domicile, it might best be called "dower" [although it does not equate with "dower" in all respects under Common Law].

The important contribution this volume makes is to introduce the Sachsenspiegel and make it accessible to an anglophone community of academics and students. There are many classrooms in which all or part of the text-and with the facsimile also the pictures-might find a useful place. This is because it is much more than "only a translation," a phrase turned readily by those who have never tried to produce one. To do so requires serious scholarship and precise linguistic skills. Maria Dobozy combines both in a large measure in this timely publication.

For his insightful review, The Society for Medieval German Studies thanks
Charles G. Nelson, Tufts University (emeritus).

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Selected Recent Titles of Interest for Medieval German Studies

The following annotated bibliography makes no attempt at being comprehensive. It strives simply to offer a selection of recent academic books that may be of interest to teacher-scholars in medieval German literature, art and cultural history. The books are listed alphabetically according to author(s) or editor(s). The summaries included here are taken from a variety of journals specializing in book reviews including Choice, a monthly magazine for acquisitions librarians published by the Association of College and Research Libraries, and Speculum, the journal of the Medieval Academy of America, and H-Net Reviews in the Humanities & Sociology (www.h-net.msu.edu) as indicated.

Hartmann, von Aue. Arthurian romances, tales, and lyric poetry: the complete works of Hartmann von Aue, tr. by Frank Tobin, Kim Vivian, and Richard H. Lawson. Pennnsylvania State, 2001. 329p bibl afp ISBN 0-271-02111-X
The translators' anthology of Medieval German Literature (1998) contains the bilingual edition of Hartmann von Aue's Poor Heinrich and excerpts of his Iwein. Here they present a free prose translation of all the works by the German author. Hartmann's works have repeatedly been translated into English: e.g., Gregorius, tr. by Sheema Zeben Buehne (1966), a bilingual edition in rhyming couplets; another edition of the same work, also in rhyming couplets, tr. by Edwin Zeydel and Bayard Morgan (1955): Erec, a prose version by J.W. Thomas (1982); Erec, tr. by Michael Resler (1987); a prose version of Iwein by J.W. Thomas. Hartmann's lyrics have also been translated: e.g., J.W. Thomas's Medieval German Lyric Verse in English Translation (1968) includes four of Hartmann's poems. Although one might argue that prose translations such as those in the present title do not capture the style of the medieval compositions, in fact prose translations tend to be more accurate. This volume is, indeed, an excellent example of good translation skills, and it also has the advantage over the other versions of containing all the works of Hartmann von Aue. Accordingly, it is highly recommended to academic libraries serving undergraduates and graduate students and to public libraries collecting medieval literature.-A. R. Wedel, University of Delaware Choice March '02 - Vol 39, No 7

Monika Schausten, Erzählwelten der Tristangeschichte im hohen Mittelalter: Untersuchungen zu den deutschsprachigen Tristanfassungen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts. (Forschungen zur Geschichte der älteren deutschen Literatur, 24). Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1999. Paper. Pp. 325.
The ambitious goal of this book, a revised version of Schausten's dissertation (Cologne, 1994/95), is to develop a new and adequate methodological perspective with which to assess the literary and cultural importance of German versions of the Tristan story produced in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Schausten posits that this is made necessary by the traditional division of the extant Tristan romances into two strands, the "spielmännische Fassung" of Béroul and Eilhart and the "höfische Fassung" of Thomas and Gottfried von Strassburg, a traditional division in the critical literature regarding Stoffgeschichte that has impeded a full and proper appreciation of the distinct characteristics and value of the various Tristan romances: "diese Differenzierung implizierte für den überwiegenden Teil der Tristanforschung eine hierarchisierende Bewertung der Texte-diese gab den sogenannten höfischen Fassungen ästhetisch den Vorrang, und zwar sowohl vor den älteren, sogenannten spielmännischen Versionen als auch vor den als epigonal eingestuften Fortsetzungstexten" (p. 15).
The decision to use Gottfried's romance as the standard, according to which Eilhart's Tristrant and the continuations of Gottfried's unfinished romance by Ulrich von Türheim and Heinrich von Freiburg are viewed as deficient on aesthetic grounds, fails to appreciate the characteristics of each of the Tristan romances and the ways they represent distinct poetic realizations of possibilities inherent in the story (e.g., the one conveyed by the conjectured Estoire). The key term in Schausten's proposed reorientation of Tristan scholarship is "Mehrfacherzählen": "Unter Mehrfacherzählen verstehe ich im Hinblick auf das mir vorliegende Material mehr als nur die Existenz verschiedener erzählerischer Versionen eines stofflichen Grundmusters. Die zu untersuchenden Tristanfassungen zeichnen sich zwar durch einen grundlegenden Bezug auf eine Geschichte (histoire) aus, doch bekanntlich stellt jede Version diesen Bezug spezifisch anders als die anderen her" (p. 18). Thus the differences among the extant Tristanfassungen are for Schausten at least as significant as the similarities. While the latter tend to be construed as more or less successful realizations of a fixed model, the differences among the versions document the specifically medieval interest in telling a story "immer wieder neu und immer wieder anders" (p. 19).

The proposed shift toward appraising each of the Tristan romances on its own merits grounded by Schausten in critical literature on narrative art, particularly by Rainer Warning and Walther Haug, which has suggested that the high Middle Ages witnessed the beginnings of fiction in the modern sense of the word and that each individual work "theorizes" its fictional status differently. Although her own analysis remains largely occupied with the narrative art of the various German poets and can be seen as a productive elaboration of Haug's views about medieval literary theory for our view of the high-medieval German Tristan tradition, Schausten suggests in her introduction that the critical perspective of Mehrfacherzählen also opens the romances up into the domain of a "cultural poetics." While this proposition seems plausible, the introductory discussion of Stephen Greenblatt, New Historicism, and the appreciation of the ways in which literature contributes to the establishment of cultural "Grenzen" nevertheless remains largely confined to the introduction and somewhat isolated form the main interest of Schausten's book, which is the narrative art, or Erzähltechnik, of the poets.

In chapters devoted to Eilhart von Oberg, Gottfried von Strassburg, Ulrich von Türheim and Heinrich von Freiburg, much-possibly too much-of what is presented . . . contributes littele to the development of Schausten's own critical perspective. Despite the overabundance of background Forschung that will convey little that is new to anybody who knows these medieval poets and their romances fairly well, Schausten's analysis nevertheless produces some very interesting observationsl The main concern in the treatment of Eilhart von Oberg's Tristrant is to bring out its narrative complexity. Schausten observes that the lovers are put forth as "Musterbilder eines höfischen Ritters und einer höfischen Dame" (p. 88), while on another level the narrator Eilhart criticizes negative consequences of their adulterous love and puts the blame for these on the love potion. Schausten also argues that those aspects of Eilhart's text that suggest a proximity to orality-traditionally seen as a sign of its literary inferiority-are actually "fingierte Mündlichkeit," a very consciously employed narrative strategy designed to depict an aristocratic courtly society with which Eilhart's audiences could identify. Gottfried's version of the story adds narrator commentaries, which interrupt the visualization of the courtly "Feste, Körper und Aufzüge," and Klangbilder, which inhibit an exclusively intellectual reception of the story. Despite those differences-indicative of a "größere Komplexität" of Gottfried's romance (p. 200). The most salient point that Schausten makes about Ulrich and Heinrich is that their works need to be seen as independent conceptions. The fact that they present themselves as continuations of Gottfried's famous romance does not mean, for medieval authors and audiences, that the poets were bound to the same literary-aesthetic conception. Hence Ulrich's and Heinrich's laudatory references to Gottfried do not state a literary (i.e., aesthetic) ambition that remains unrealized but rather are elements in these authors' unique literary conceptions that need to be assessed according to their own merits.

Readers of Schausten's book may sometimes have the impression that the critical project has been lost from view, as the analysis begins to look like a Forschungsbericht or a fairly straightforward comparison of features of various Tristan romances, the broader theoretical significance of which is not immediately clear. The strengths of Schausten's book are its productive synthesis of that research over the last few decades and its elaboration of the significance of that research for our understanding of the German Tristan romances. While it falls short of developing in a compelling and rigorous way the new methodological perspective envisioned in the introduction, Schausten's study nevertheless makes an important contribution to the critical discussion of the medieval German Tristan romances by challenging us to view the significance of each of the romances on its own merits and giving us good reasons for doing so.

Will Hasty, University of Florida (Speculum, October 2001, Vol. 76, 4.,1099 -1100)

SMGS Newsletter and Reviews on-line
Our Web site aims to be of service to our colleagues and medieval German studies by making the SMGS' Newsletter and Review more readily available to everyone, especially to colleagues outside of North America.
Our Web site address is: http://www.fhsu.edu/mlng/germanstudies.shtml

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News from Colleagues
Helmut Brall-Tuchel (Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf)
has published: "Wahrlich, die Pfaffen sind schlimmer als der Teufel!"
Zur Entstehung der deutschen Schwankdichtung im 13. Jahrhundert, in:
Euphorion 94 (2000), 319-334. Also"Die Heerscharen des Antichrist. Gog und Magog in der Literatur des Mittelalters," in: Endzeitsvorstellungen, ed. by Barbara Haupt, Düsseldorf: Droste, 2001 (Studia humaniora), Vol. 33. 97-228. ISBN 3-7700-0841-3

Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona, Tucson) has published "MORIZ UND KEIN ENDE…Zugleich kritisch-provokative Gedanken über den wissenschaftlichen Betrieb in der mediävistischen Germanistik" in: Amsterdamer Beiträge zur Älteren Germanistik,
Vol. 55, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001. 75-93

Sara S. Poor (Stanford) and Kathryn Starkey (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) have organized three sessions for medieval German literature for YMAGINA at the upcoming GSA conference in San Diego, October 2002.

Nigel Harris (University of Birmingham) has recently published: "The Teaching of Medieval German Literature at American Universities: A Survey," in: Forum for Modern Language Studies 2001 Vol. 37 No. 4. 429-40.

(News not included in this edition will appear in the summer edition in August)

The SMGS Newsletter & Review is written and edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz,
Department of Modern Languages , Fort Hays State University,
303 Rarick Hall, 600 Park Street, Hays, Kansas 67601-4099, U.S.A.
Fax: (785) 628-5693. E-mail: ehintz@truman.edu
Send contributions in German, English or French by August 1, 2002,
using the attached information update form.

On behalf of Edward Haymes, Francis G. Gentry, Susanne Hafner
and the Society for Medieval German Studies,
Best wishes to you all for the Spring,
Ernst Ralf Hintz

(SMGS) Group at Kalamazoo

Please return to:

Ernst Ralf Hintz
Department of Modern Languages Fax: (785) 628 - 5693
Fort Hays State University E-mail: ehintz@truman.edu
Hays, Kansas 67601-4099 U.S.A.

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