the language of poetry. The earliest compositions in that
language continue for a while to bear the stamp of the clerical poetry of
a former age. The first Middle High-German poems are written by a nun; and
the poetical translation of the Books of Moses, the poem on Anno, Bishop
of Cologne, and the "Chronicle of the Roman Emperors," all continue to
breathe the spirit of cloisters and cathedral towns. And when a new taste
for chivalrous romances was awakened in Germany; when the stories of
Arthur and his knights, of Charlemagne and his champions, of Achilles,
AEneas, and Alexander, in their modern dress, were imported by French and
Provencal knights, who, on their way to Jerusalem, came to stay at the
castles of their German allies, the first poets who ventured to imitate
these motley compositions were priests, not laymen. A few short extracts
from Konrad's "Roland" and Lamprecht's "Alexander" are sufficient to mark
this period of transition. Like Charlemagne, who had been changed into a
legendary hero by French poets before he became again the subject of
German poetry, another German worthy returned at the same time to his
native home, though but slightly changed by his foreign travels, "Reinhard
the Fox." The influence of Provence and of Flanders is seen in every
branch of German poetry at that time; and yet nothing can be more
different than the same subject, as treated by French and German poets.
The German Minnesaenger in particular were far from being imitators of the
Trouveres or Troubadours. There are a few solitary instances of lyric
poems translated from Provencal into German;(5) as there is, on the other
hand, one poem translated from German into Italian,(6) early in the
thirteenth century. But the great mass of German lyrics are of purely
German growth. Neither the Romans, nor the lineal descendants of the
Romans, the Italians, the Provencals, the Spaniards, can claim that poetry
as their own. It is Teutonic, purely Teutonic in its heart and soul,
though its utterance, its rhyme and metre, its grace and imagery, have
been touched by the more genial rays of the brilliant sun of a more
southern sky. The same applies to the great romantic poems of that period.
The first impulse came from abroad. The subjects were borrowed from a
foreign source, and the earlier poems, such as Heinrich von Veldecke's
"AEneid," might occasionally paraphrase the sentiments of French poets. But
in the works of Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram