Page:EB1911 - Volume 18.djvu/574

 and was first used in love poems by the Alsatian minnesinger Ulrich von Gutenberg.

The origin of the native lyric, which flourished especially in Austria and Bavaria, is perhaps to be sought in the songs which accompanied dancing. These were not necessarily love songs, but celebrated the coming of spring, the gloom of winter &c., the commonplaces of Minnesang throughout the two centuries of its existence. The older lyrics, which date from the middle of the 12th century, are simple in form and written in the ordinary epic metres. The earliest minnesinger whose name has come down to us is Der von Kürenberg (fl. c. 1160), a scion of an Austrian knightly family whose castle lay on the Danube, west of Linz. These songs, however, contradict the root idea of Minnedienst, since the lady is the wooer, and the poet, at the most, an acquiescent lover. They take the form of laments for an absent lover, complaints of his faithlessness and the like. Among the other Austrian and south German lyrists who show small trace of foreign influence was Dietmar von Aist (d. c. 1171), though some of the songs attributed to him seem to be of later date. While the love-song remained in the hands of noble singers, the Spruch was cultivated by humbler poets. The elder of the two or three poets concealed under the name of Spervogel was a wandering singer who found patronage at the court of the burgraves of Regensburg, one of whom himself figures among the earlier minnesingers.

The characteristic period of German Minnesang begins at the close of the 12th century with the establishment of the Provençal tradition in western Germany through the poems of Heinrich von Veldeke and Friedrich von Hausen. National elements abound in Veldeke’s songs, although the amour courtois dominates the whole; Friedrich von Hausen (d. 1190) followed Provençal models closely. The long crusading song Sie darf mich des Zîhen niet, is a good example of his powers. A close disciple of the troubadours Peire Vidal and Folquet de Marseille was the Swiss Count Rudolf von Fenis. The greatest name among the earlier minnesingers is that of Heinrich von Morungen, a Thuringian poet who lived on in popular story in the ballad of “The Noble Moringer.” He brought great imaginative power to bear on the common subjects of Minnesang, and his poetry has a very modern note. The formal art and science of Minnesang reached full development in the subtle love-songs of Reinmar, the Alsatian “nightingale of Hagenau.” Uhland aptly called him the “scholastic philosopher of unhappy love.” As a metrist he developed a greater correctness of rhyme, and a better handling of German metres. He became a member of the court of Duke Leopold V. (d. 1194) of Austria, and there (q.v.) was first his disciple, and then perhaps his rival. Walther, the greatest of medieval German lyric poets, had Reinmar’s technical art, but in feeling was more nearly allied to Morungen. He raised the Spruch to the dignity of a serious political poem, which proved a potent weapon against the policy of Innocent III. In 1202 at the court of Hermann, landgrave of Thuringia, he met Wolfram von Eschenbach, who is said to have taken part in the tourney of poets known as the Wartburgskrieg, made world-famous through Wagner’s Tannhäuser. The Tagelieder of Wolfram give him a high place in Minnesang, although his fame, like that of Heinrich von Veldeke and Hartmann von Aue, chiefly rests on his epics. A new style—called by Lachmann höfische Dorfpoesie—was marked out by Neidhart von Reuental (d. c. 1240), who belonged to the lesser Bavarian nobility. He wrote songs to accompany the dances of the village beauties, and comic and realistic descriptions of village life to please the court. He was acknowledged by the Meistersinger as one of the twelve masters of song. Nevertheless, with him the decadence may be said to have begun.

The Styrian poet Ulrich von Lichtenstein (d. c. 1275) unconsciously caricatured chivalry itself by his Frauendienst, in which he relates the absurd feats which he had undertaken at his lady’s command, while Steinmar (fl. 1276) deliberately parodied

court poetry in his praises of rustic beauty and good living. In the lays, songs and proverbs of Tannhäuser something of both elements, of the court and the village, is to be found. He seems to have lived as a wandering singer until 1268, and there very soon grew up round his name the Tannhäuser myth which has so little foundation in his life or poetry. The Austrian poet Reinmar von Zweter (d. c. 1260) left some hundreds of Sprüche political or social in their import. Among the princes who practised Minnesang were the emperor Henry VI., though the two songs preserved under his name are of doubtful authenticity, Duke Henry IV. of Breslau (fl. 1270-1290), King Wenceslaus II. of Bohemia, the margrave Otto IV. of Brandenburg, Wizlaw IV., prince of Rügen and the unhappy Conradin, the last of the house of Hohenstaufen, beheaded by the order of Charles of Anjou before he reached his seventeenth year.

The didactic motive came more and more to the front in the 13th century. The wandering Swabian poet Marner (d. c. 1270) cultivated especially the Spruch, laughed at the Provençal and courtly tradition, and there is no very great step from his learning and his feuds to the conditions of Meistersang. Heinrich von Meissen (1250-1319), known as “Frauenlob” (“ladies’ praise”), was one of the last minnesingers, and his pedantry and virtuosity entitle him to be called the first meistersinger.

 MINNESOTA, a North Central State of the United States of America. It is bounded on the S. by Iowa, on the W. by South and North Dakota—the Red River (commonly called the Red River of the North) separating it from the latter state—on the N. by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario, being separated from the latter by the Lake of the Woods, Rainy River and Rainy Lake, and certain of their tributaries and outlets, and on the E. by Lake Superior and by Wisconsin, from which it is separated for the greater part of the distance by the Mississippi and St Croix rivers. It is the tenth state in size in the Union, with a total area of 84,682 sq. m., of which 3,824 sq. m. are water surface. From north to south it is about 400 m. in length, extending from 43° 30′ to 49° 23′ 55″ N. lat., and from east to west its width is about 354 m., lying between long. 89° 29' and 97° 15′ W.

The north-east part of the state is included in the Great Lakes Province, and the southern and western parts are in the Prairie Plains Province. The whole area of the state was formerly a complexly folded mountainous region of strong relief, which was