Heinrich von Morungen
Encyclopedia
Heinrich von Morungen or Henry of Morungen (died ca. 1220 or 1222) was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Minnesinger.

Life

Almost nothing about his life can be deduced from Heinrich's songs. Possibly he is identical with the Hendricus de Morungen who is documented in Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

. This Hendricus belonged to the class of minor knight
Knight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....

s and presumably originated from the castle of Morungen
Morungen
Morungen may refer to:*Heinrich von Morungen, medieval German minnesinger*A suburb of the city Sangerhausen, Germany*An alternative spelling of Mohrungen, the German name of Morąg, Poland...

 near Sangerhausen
Sangerhausen
Sangerhausen is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, capital of the district of Mansfeld-Südharz, without being part of it.It is situated southeast of the Harz, approx. 35 km east of Nordhausen, and 50 km west of Halle...

. As a "retired knight" (miles emeritus) he received from his patron, Dietrich I, Margrave of Meissen, a pension for his "high personal merits" (alta suae vitae merita). He transferred this in 1213 to the monastery of St Thomas in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, which he entered himself in 1217. According to 16th century sources, he died there in 1222 after a journey to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. In the Late Middle Ages
Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages was the period of European history generally comprising the 14th to the 16th century . The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern era ....

, there was extant a "Ballad of the Noble Moringer", which transferred onto Heinrich von Morungen the stock theme of the return of a husband believed lost.

Works

There survive 35 Minnelieder by Heinrich, with 115 verses, of which only 104 are to be found in the great collection of the Codex Manesse
Codex Manesse
The Codex Manesse, Manesse Codex, or Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift is a Liederhandschrift , the single most comprehensive source of Middle High German Minnesang poetry, written and illustrated between ca. 1304 when the main part was completed, and ca...

. The melodies have not survived.

Heinrich is a very graphic lyricist: he particularly often makes use of images of shining (sun, moon, evening star, gold, jewels, mirror) as comparisons by which to describe the lady who is being sung and praised.

An essential theme in Heinrich's work is the demonic nature of Minne, the Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...

 word for this type of love, which for the mediaeval writers was embodied by the ancient classical goddess of love, Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...

. Minne is experienced partly as a magical, pathological, even fatal power, but also as a religious and mystical experience.

In form and content the poems are influenced by the Provençal
Provençal language
Provençal is a dialect of Occitan spoken by a minority of people in southern France, mostly in Provence. In the English-speaking world, "Provençal" is often used to refer to all dialects of Occitan, but it actually refers specifically to the dialect spoken in Provence."Provençal" is also the...

 troubadour
Troubadour
A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

 lyric: dactylic rhythms and through-rhymes (Durchreimung) occur frequently. Motifs in the content have also been taken over from the same source: for example, the motif, otherwise rare in German Minnesang, of the "notice of termination of the service of love" (Lied XXVII), the roots of which are to be found in classical literature (for example Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

).

An introduction often attributed to Heinrich is the Wechsel or exchange (where the two parties speak alternately, but not directly to each other) in the Tagelied
Tagelied
The Tagelied is a particular form of mediaeval German language lyric, taken and adapted from the Provençal troubadour tradition by the German Minnesinger...

, although the device may be found in the poems of Dietmar von Aist
Dietmar von Aist
Dietmar von Aist was a Minnesinger from a baronial family of Upper Austria, documented between 1140 and 1171,whose work is representative of the lyric poetry of the Danube region.-Life:...

, who is believed to be earlier.

External links

(in German)
  • http://texte.mediaevum.de/texte/morungen.htm - E-Text
    E-text
    An e-text is, generally, any text-based information that is available in a digitally encoded human-readable format and read by electronic means, but more specifically it refers to files in the ASCII character encoding.E-text has the broad meaning of something electronic that represents words, a...

    s of the songs at Mediaevum.de
  • Digital Facsimile of Heinrich von Morungen's lyrics in the "Codex Manesse" (University Library, Heidelberg)
  • "Nein, ja!" (Salzburger Ensemble for Ancient Music Dulamans Vröudenton)


This article is mostly translated from that in the German Wikipedia.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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