Performing Medieval Literature and/as History: The Museum of Wolframs-Eschenbach

Summary

In his address at the official opening of the Wolframs-Eschenbach Museum in January 1995, the author Adolf Muschg called the museum a “Guckkasten in die Unerschöpflichkeit eines Universums der Kunst und […] Spielplatz für Menschenphantasien” (“a peepshow into the inexhaustibility of an artistic universe […] a playground for human fantasies”). The review in Die Zeit called the museum, which was the result of five years of planning in a joint effort between state and regional governments, a “Mini-Gesamtkunstwerk”; the museum designers had created “einen spirituellen Erlebnisraum, eine Zauberbude und Lesekammer, bestem 68er Geist entsprungen, ein Literaturmuseum eigener Art” (“a spiritual experience, a magical booth and reading chamber created from the best spirit of 68, a unique literary museum”). According to the Schwäbische Donauzeitung, the small town of Wolframs-Eschenbach had achieved success “optisch in faszinierender Weise” (“in a visually fascinating manner”) where some larger cities might have failed. The national weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called the concept a “kühne Idee” (“clever idea”).

Town museums, which usually display town history, may occasionally be called fascinating or unusual, but they are not often dedicated to literature (“ein Literaturmuseum”), nor are they considered a “Spielplatz für Menschenphantasien,” to say nothing of a “Mini-Gesamtkunstwerk.” Certainly, one would expect a town by the name of Wolframs Eschenbach to include in its history (and therefore in its local museum) the story and perhaps even the works of its famous namesake Wolfram von Eschenbach. The town even changed its name to reflect this integral connection to the medieval poet; originally called simply “Eschenbach” (not to be confused with Untereschenbach or Mitteleschenbach), the town received permission in 1917 from Ludwig III of Bavaria to call itself “Wolframs-Eschenbach.” This change may have offered the town a way to get “back on the map,” as it were, and regain some of the renown lost when the Teutonic Knights ceded their authority in Eschenbach to the kingdom of Bavaria in the early nineteenth century. But I suggest that this change of name shows a town actively and intentionally constructing its modern (even postmodern) public identity around the medieval poet of Parzival (as well as Titurel and Willehalm) and his texts.