Hartmann von Aue

Summary

ALTHOUGH ONE OF THE BEST KNOWN and most widely studied poets of the German Middle Ages, Hartmann von Aue presents the modern scholar in search of biographical details with the usual problems: there are no firm dates, no contemporary historical records of his name, no precise pointers, even within the works themselves, to personal circumstances or family connections. By his own proud boast, he was a knight with a good education, an unusual distinction for the warrior class. The place name “Au” and compounds of it are far too common to be localized with any degree of confidence. There is some consensus that the southwest of the German-speaking empire is where Hartmann lived, and since he appears to imply a close link between the Swabian hero of Der arme Heinrich and the aristocratic family with whom Hartmann himself was in service, the old duchy of Swabia is most likely Hartmann's homeland. Hartmann is considered a pioneer, with Heinrich von Veldeke, in adapting medieval courtly narratives for a German public. His works, in the generally accepted order of their completion, are: Erec, an Arthurian romance for which Hartmann's major source was probably the French Erec et Enite of Chrétien de Troyes; Gregorius, a much shorter narrative which traces the miraculous career of an exceptionally talented aristocrat from incestuous beginnings to papacy, and which is based on an anonymous French tale La vie du pape saint Grégoire; Der arme Heinrich, the account of a high-born and apparently blameless hero's brush with the dreaded disease, leprosy; and Iwein, another Arthurian romance adapted from Chrétien's medieval French version.