German Literature in English Translation

(preliminary version covering introduction, Hildebrandslied, Nibelungenlied)

antiquity: the period before the Middle Ages, in the broad division of history into antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern era. “Classical antiquity” refers to the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome.

Christian Church: “the Church” in the European Middle Ages is the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman and Greek churches (Orthodox) diverged in some doctrines from an early date, and broke apart entirely in 1054, but the Greek church had no presence in the West. The rise of Protestant theology (Luther, for example), and the establishment of the Protestant churches is one of the major changes dividing the Middle Ages from the modern era. The Church obviously had an enormous impact on the culture and thought of the Middle Ages. As the only major international institution to remain relatively stable through the breakup of the Roman Empire and the eventual emergence of medieval Europe, it provided a bridge between the ancient and the medieval worlds. Throughout the Middle Ages, and especially in the early part of the period, the Church was virtually the only institution of what we would call “higher education,” keeping alive the knowledge of Latin and of classical literature.

court: a royal or noble household. Physically, the medieval German court is located in a castle, either in a rural area or a relatively small town; the court was likely to move periodically from place to place within the ruler’s or nobleman’s territories. In the romances, Arthur’s court must often be imagined as a group of tents (as it is depicted in the Munich Parzival manuscript).

courtly: of or pertaining to a court. “Following Middle High German usage, höfisch (courtly) can be applied to various aspects of the new [13th century] social ideal, that is to the entire sphere of ‘courtly’ culture. At the center was the figure of the ‘courtly’ knight, who dressed in a ‘courtly’ fashion, cultivated ‘courtly’ manners, and exhibited ‘courtly’ sentiment. Here the word ‘courtly’ takes on a pronounced ideological character, which comes out especially when the focus is on ‘courtly’ virtue and on ‘courtly’ love as the central quality of the new social ideal” (Bumke 60). Insofar as it was made in and for the courts, virtually all medieval vernacular literature might be called “courtly.” But as a literary term, “courtly” is usually used more narrowly to indicate the lighter and happier literature of knightly adventure, as opposed to the grimmer, bloodier “heroic” literature of serious warfare, and other types of medieval literature.
 

dialect: regional form of a language. Over long periods of time, dialects can grow into distinct languages. Languages vary by geographical region, social class, educational level, and even individual speaker. The term dialect designates a definable regional variant: more loosely, it is often used for social and other variations as well. Theoretically, speakers of different dialects of the same language can understand each other, while speakers of different languages cannot. But in reality there is a great range of intelligibility, and the difference between a language and a dialect cannot be defined with objective, scientific precision. Political boundaries and nationalistic concerns often play a vital role in defining the difference, as is in the case of Low German and Dutch or Czech and Slovak.

feudal system: system of land tenure and political structure based on the personal relationship of lord and vassal.

German: a West Germanic language, spoken in modern Germany, Austria, part of Switzerland, etc.

Germanic: adjective designating the languages and/or the ethnicity of a group of tribes living in North Central Europe from the last few centuries BC. As a language, Germanic arose from Indo-European; by about 400 AD, Proto-Germanic had begun to break up into the languages that became modern German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, etc. Starting in about 375, many of the Germanic tribes began what is called the “Great Migration,” leaving their homelands and moving around Europe. The destruction of Rome in 476 and the invasion of England by the Angles and Saxons in the late fifth century were both part of the migration phenomenon.

Germany: a term we can use loosely for the German-speaking area of Europe in the Middle Ages, although Germany as a modern nation-state did not come into being until 1871.

High Middle Ages: the middle part of the Middle Ages, when medieval culture may be said to have been at its height; roughly the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Holy Roman Empire (das deutsche Reich, etc.): the medieval empire originally founded by Charlemagne, reunited  in 919 by Heinrich I. Ruled by an elected emperor, the Empire was theoretically the restoration of the ancient Roman empire (hence the name). In fact, it was a somewhat unstable and constantly changing group of kingdoms, principalities, duchies, etc., centering on the kingdoms of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy. Though the emperor was elected, the throne tended to remain in the hands of particular noble families for long periods of time: the Hohenstaufen ruled from 1138-1250; the Habsburgs from 1438-1806. The Holy Roman Empire was officially dissolved by Napoleon in 1806 (the Habsburgs continued to rule as Emperors of Austria until 1918).

knight (Middle High German rîter or ritter, French chevalier, medieval Latin miles): the medieval warrior on horseback; the social class composed of these warriors. In the broad division of medieval society  into those who pray, those who fight, and those who work, the term “knight” could be used to designate the entire “warrior” class. But within the large category of “those who fight,” the term knight often distinguished the lower nobility, as opposed to the kings and princes and dukes. In another sense, though, “noble knighthood was not primarily a social but an idelogical phenomenon” (Bumke 49). The military service of the mounted warrior was endowed with religious significance and associated with an idealized concept of nobility. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the usage of the French and German terms in the Middle Ages is almost entirely limited to literary texts. The idealized knighthood of the romances is best regarded as a literary phenomenon, a poetic ideal. In Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach implies the existence of some organized and all-encompassing “Order of Knighthood,” but nothing like this existed in reality. Organized military-religious orders like the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Teutonic Knights were founded during the crusades, and may have  provided Wolfram with part of his inspiration for the Grail community.

laity, lay: Lay people are those who do not belong to the clergy or other religious orders. In the Middle Ages, lay people were generally presumed to be illiterate and to have no knowledge of Latin. The actual facts of medieval literacy were more complex, but it is certainly accurate as a generalization to say that the average lay person, even if of high social standing, could not read.

Latin: the language of Rome and its Empire, and thus the language of the western Christian Church. Latin was also the language of all “higher education” in the Middle Ages.

literacy: the ability to read. In a literate culture, ideas and information are transmitted and preserved in writing. In the Middle Ages, while the institutions of the Christian Church maintained a high level of Latin literacy, most lay people were illiterate. See also textuality.

lord, lordship: a medieval ruler and his power and authority. Medieval political and social structure did not depend on the concept of the state but on the concept of lordship. The power to rule a given region did not depend on an abstract concept of statehood or nationhood but on the rights and authorities perceived as inherent within an individual, who had either inherited this lordship from ancestors or accquired it through some arrangement with another lord. The area ruled by a medieval lord might be a few square miles, or a large kingdom, but the principle was essentially the same in either case. See social hierarchy.

manuscript: a book (or other document) that is written by hand, as opposed to being mechanically or electronically reproduced. Abbreviated ms., plural mss.

Middle Ages: period of European history that follows antiquity, conventionally regarded as beginning with the fall of Rome to Odoacer in 476 and ending (in Germany) with the death of Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I in 1519. The use of a single label for this entire thousand-year period conceals a great deal of chronological change and regional variation, yet certain generalizations do apply to the entire period, which is set apart from antiquity and from the modern era by, among other things, the generally unquestioned belief in transcendence (specifically in the Christian religion), the total dominance of the Christian Church (specifically the Roman Catholic) over spiritual and intellectual life, the limited literacy of the laity, the textuality of the culture, the reliance on authority, rather than observation, experience, or human reason as a truth-source, and the emergence and development of the feudal system.

ministerial: simply put, a lower-ranking German knight. In the High Middle Ages in Germany, ministerials were a class of men who served the nobility, either as mounted warriors or in administrative capacities, or both. Although some ministerials were quite wealthy and powerful, and all were more or less “upper class” compared to most of the population, they were unfree, and thus ranked distinctly and importantly below the nobility and the royalty in the social hierarchy. See also social hierarchy.

nobility: basically, the class of people qualified, usually by inherited status, to exercise lordship. This was a very small part of the total population, and even within this class actual power was exercised by a minority: women were generally excluded from lordship (although a widow might rule a region for the rest of her life); in many areas, estates passed undivided to the eldest son, leaving other children relatively powerless (although still wealthy and privileged). Nobility also came to be regarded as a set of characteristics, such as courtesy, honor, and generosity  (see also courtly virtues). See also social hierarchy.

orality: in a purely oral culture, like those of the ancient Germanic and Celtic peoples,  writing does not exist. The culture must transmit all its traditions, stories, beliefs, and information orally.

printing: more precisely, printing with movable type, introduced in Europe in the mid-fifteenth century. The first European printer is usually said to have been Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, whose Bible of about 1455 is one of the most famous early printed books. Printing allowed the mass production of books and other written materials, and is intrinsically related to revolutionary changes in the way ideas and information are disseminated--the transition from a textual to a literate culture. Thus some speak of the “Gutenberg revolution,” as if the technology of printing directly caused the transformation. It is probably more accurate to speak of the print revolution as one essential part of a set of changes in European culture, including the rise of the urban middle class, the spread of literacy, the development of modern science, the increased importance of the vernaculars, and the Protestant Reformation.

Rome: the great “superpower” of ancient times. Rome reached its greatest power in the last century BC and the first couple of centuries AD; at its height, the Roman empire included much of modern Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East. Much of the Germanic-speaking region, however, remained outside the empire. From about 300, the empire was divided into a western part, with its capital at Rome, and a Greek-speaking eastern part, with its capital at Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). After the collapse of the western Empire in 476, the eastern part continued to exist until 1453. The Christian Church developed in the Roman world. The government intermittently persecuted Christians (because they refused to worship the emperor) from 64-311, but the emperor Constantine gave them full freedom and equality in 313, and Christianity became the offical state church of the empire in 391. Thus Rome became the “capital” of the Catholic Church, and Latin became the language of the Church.

scribe: the writer of a manuscript (almost never identical with the author of a text). Scribes inevitably made changes in texts--not only minor errors and inconsistencies in spelling, such as a modern typist or typesetter might make, but also deliberate alterations, additions, and omissions.

social hierarchy: the Middle Ages was a highly hierarchical society without a great deal of social mobility; one generally stayed in the social position to which one was born. But when we try to label and define the different levels of medieval society, this becomes rather bewildering, in part because medieval writers described different hierarchies in different contexts. For example, medieval writers commonly divided all society into those who pray, those who fight, and those who work. But “those who fight” would include a great range of ranks from kings and emperors to very local lords and ministerials. And “those who work” would have to include everyone from wealthy urban merchants and bankers to serfs and slaves. One of the most important distinctions was that between free and unfree, but unfree people ranged from wealthy ministerials to, again, serfs and slaves. What all the unfree had in common was that they could not move freely, marry freely, or leave property to their descendants. The German Lucidarius, a textbook of general knowledge, written about the end of 12th century, divides people into “the free, the knights, and the serfs,” with “knights” presumably designating the ministerials, who were unfree but nontheless fairly high-ranking.

The terminology depiction of social class in vernacular literature is often confusingly different from that of legal sources, which are generally Latin. For example, when Siegfried says, literally, that Gunther is his “lord” and he is Gunther’s “man,” that is usually taken is meaning that Siegfried is claiming to be Gunther’s vassal. But it has also been suggested that Siegfried was actually pretending to be a ministerial of Gunther’s, which would imply a much greater social difference and thus perhaps make Brunhild’s reaction to the Siegfried-Kriemhild marriage more understandable.

textuality: medieval culture has been described as being neither oral nor literate, but textual. Even though the founding principles of the culture were preserved in texts, such as the Bible and the writings of the Church Fathers, most people had no direct access to these texts. See orality, literacy.

vassal: one who receives the use of and lordship over a certain territory (a fief) from a higher lord, in return for service and loyalty. The vassal is subordinate to his lord, but the term should not be misunderstood as indicating low social status in any broad sense. A vassal is noble; an  individual might have high rank and extensive holdings in his own right, and still accept one particular fief from some other lord, thus becoming his vassal.

vernacular: the language of the people of a region, such as German, English, or French, as opposed to Latin or Greek. In the European Middle Ages, the language of the Church and of education was Latin.
 
 
 

WORKS CITED
Bumke, Joachim. Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages. Trans. Thomas Dunlap. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.