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Der arme Heinrich (Poor Heinrich) is a Middle High German narrative poem by Hartmann von Aue. It was probably written in the 1190s and was the second to last of Hartmann's four epic works. Combining courtly and religious narrative patterns, it tells the story of a noble knight who has been stricken by God with leprosy and can be cured only by the heart's blood of a virgin who willingly sacrifices herself for his salvation.
In a short prologue, which contains most of the known historical details about von Aue, the narrator names himself. The story then begins by introducing Heinrich, a young Freiherr (baron) of Ouwe in Swabia. He commands great material wealth and the highest social esteem, and embodies all knightly virtues and courtly behavior, including skills in the Minnesang.
Heinrich plummets from this ideal life when God afflicts him with leprosy and those around him turn away from him in fear and disgust. In contrast with the biblical Job, Heinrich is unable to come to terms with his affliction. He visits doctors in Montpellier, who are unable to help him. At the famous Schola Medica Salernitana, a doctor informs him that the only cure is the life blood of a virgin of marriageable age, who freely sacrifices herself. Despairing, without hope of recovery, Heinrich returns home, gives away the greater part of his worldly goods, and goes to live in the house of the caretaker of one of his estates.
There the daughter of a farmer becomes the second main character. The girl (in manuscript A she is 8; in manuscript B she is 12) is not afraid of Heinrich and becomes his devoted companion. Soon Heinrich jokingly calls her his bride. When, after three years, she overhears Heinrich forlornly telling her father what he needs for his cure, she is determined to lay down her life for him, believing it is the quickest way to escape sinful earthly life and obtain everlasting life with God in the hereafter. In a speech whose rhetorical power is ascribed by her parents to divine inspiration, she convinces her parents and Heinrich to accept her sacrifice as God's will.
Heinrich and the girl travel to Salerno, where the doctor unsuccessfully tries to convince her to reverse her decision. As the doctor is about to cut out the girl's heart, Heinrich sees her through a chink in the door, naked and bound to the operating table, and intervenes. He tells them that as he compared her beauty to his disfigured form, he became aware of the monstrosity of their undertaking, and, in a sudden change of heart, has accepted his leprosy as God's will. The girl berates him for not letting her die, and taunts him as a coward.
As they return to Ouwe, Heinrich is miraculously cured by God's providence. Despite the differences in their social standing, the two are married. Heinrich returns to his social position, his estate's caretaker becomes a yeoman farmer, and Heinrich and the girl achieve eternal salvation.
The date of origin of Poor Heinrich can only be approximated. Chrétien de Troyes' Erec and Enide , the model for Hartmann's first novel Erec, was probably well known by 1165. Therefore, Hartmann probably emerged as an author some years after that, perhaps around 1180. At the latest all four of Hartmann's novels were known by 1205 or 1210, because Wolfram von Eschenbach refers to Iwien, Hartmann's final work, in his work Parzival.
In the chronology of Hartmann's work, Poor Heinrich is, for stylistic reasons, counted as the third of his narrative works. The first is generally considered to be the Arthurian novel Erec followed by the legendary story Gregorius. His final work is the second Arthurian story, Iwein, which was possibly begun right after the completion of Erec but only completed later. Hartmann's Minnelieder (love songs) and Crusades poems are very difficult to date or order, though his short poem Klagebuechlein is usually placed prior to the four novels.
Hartmann speaks in the prologue of stories that he has found in books, which he simply wants to retell. However, such sources have not been found in German, French, or Latin records of the Middle Ages, so one could conclude that the report of the source is fictional and intended as a literary device to underscore the authenticity of the story. The traditional Latin stories from the 14th or 15th centuries Henricus pauper and Albertus pauper are probably derivative of Hartmann's story rather than its sources.
One traditional source is spoken to directly in the text, that of Job, who in the Bible was tested by God with leprosy. Among other stories of supernatural cases and cures of leprosy are the legend of Pope Sylvester I, who was supposedly healed by Constantine the Great as well as the Amicus und Amelius of Konrad von Würzburg.
The poor system of transcription led to a number of inconsistencies and obscurities in the story, most of which have to do with the nameless farmer's daughter. There are two surviving manuscripts as well as various fragments. Most glaring, Manuscript A gives her age as 8 when Heinrich comes to live at the steward's house, while Manuscript B gives it as 12, though there are a number of other differences.
The central question that the story leaves open is the reason God has stricken Heinrich with leprosy. On the one hand it can be considered punishment for his worldly lifestyle—this is how Heinrich himself understands it and there is also a comparison with Absalom early in the work which support this reading. On the other hand, the leprosy can be interpreted as a test from God, an interpretation supported by the comparisons with Job. However, unlike Job, Heinrich does not at first accept the test; he seeks a cure and then despairs.
The role of the girl presents another central problem. That she remains nameless seems to push her into an inferior position that belies her critical role in the story. The rhetorically masterful and theologically expert speech which she gives to Heinrich and her parents, convincing them to accept her sacrifice, is attributed to the Holy Ghost. It remains unclear whether she is motivated by true altruism or by a sort of "salvation-egoism", wanting to buy the saving of her own soul, as it often seems.
The girl falls back into a secondary role at the end of the poem, though not without being raised to the nobility through her marriage. The social position of the female protagonist presents a real conundrum. The life of Heinrich with his vassal farmer, who at the end becomes a yeoman farmer, can be read as a kind of societal utopia. Equally utopian is the idea that a farmer's daughter could have been raised to the nobility as the legitimate wife of a baron. The free or unfree birth of the girl, which Hartmann overtly wished to thematize, is also to be understood as a spiritual allegory.
Also striking is the similarity of the main character's name, Heinrich von Ouwe, with the author's, Hartmann von Aue. One can read it as an attempt at clarifying family history--to explain that the Ministerialis-class (the lower, unfree nobility) of von Aue's family was due to an ancestor's marriage to a commoner. Indeed, Germanist Daniel Shumway concluded that the stories referred to in the prologue were likely from a family history, since lost. [1] However, Hartmann is silent on the subject.
A significant problem in literary research is a lack of consensus as to which literary genre Der Arme Heinrich belongs. The relatively short narrative with 1,520 verses is on one hand closely related to spiritual or metaphysical literature such as the legend, the fable or fairy tale, the parable, and the hagiography. On the other hand, it has unmistakable elements of the chivalric romance. The religious dimensions of the text clearly dominate the narrative, but even though Heinrich is converted and miraculously healed, he does not become a saint. It is strikingly analogous to the form of the redemption fairy tale, but this genre lacks the religious themes that are predominant in Der Arme Heinrich. [2]
Because elements of both spiritual texts and chivalric romances are recognizable in Der Arme Heinrich, it must be understood as a special form: the miraculous chivalric romance. To avoid the complications of assigning a particular genre to the text, it is often referred to as a short epic or rhymed couplet poem (similar to a heroic couplet, but lacking iambic pentameter).
Der Arme Heinrich is often referred to as having a novelistic character and is called a verse novel, but the term is generally only used for stories from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. As the text dates prior to 1200, it is nearly completely unique in terms of genre. Its only contemporaries that share a genre are the anonymous middle high German verse romance Moriz von Craûn, in which Maurice II de Craon is the central character, and Wernher der Gartenære's Meier Helmbrecht .
Hartmann's story was first translated into Modern German in the late 18th century but only became well known in Germany through an adaptation by the Brothers Grimm in 1815. Around that time, it was translated into a number of other languages, including English.
The story was the original basis for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's loose adaptation in an 1851 poem "The Golden Legend." [3] Longfellow's poem was adapted into a very popular cantata of the same name by Arthur Sullivan with libretto by Joseph Bennett first performed in 1888.
The poem was later, independently adapted into a full, German-language opera by Hans Pfitzner with the libretto by James Grun. It opened in 1895 in Mainz and was later performed in numerous German cities.
The story was also adopted into a play by Gerhart Hauptmann, which opened in 1902 in Vienna.
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem written around 1200 in Middle High German. Its anonymous poet was likely from the region of Passau. The Nibelungenlied is based on an oral tradition of Germanic heroic legend that has some of its origin in historic events and individuals of the 5th and 6th centuries and that spread throughout almost all of Germanic-speaking Europe. Scandinavian parallels to the German poem are found especially in the heroic lays of the Poetic Edda and in the Völsunga saga.
Moriz or Moritz Haupt, was a German philologist.
Hartmann von Aue, also known as Hartmann von Ouwe, was a German knight and poet. With his works including Erec, Iwein, Gregorius, and Der arme Heinrich, he introduced the Arthurian romance into German literature and, with Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg, was one of the three great epic poets of Middle High German literature.
Karl Joseph Simrock was a German poet and writer. He is primarily known for his translation of Das Nibelungenlied into modern German.
Middle High German is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. High German is defined as those varieties of German which were affected by the Second Sound Shift; the Middle Low German and Middle Dutch languages spoken to the North and North West, which did not participate in this sound change, are not part of MHG.
Gottfried von Strassburg is the author of the Middle High German courtly romance Tristan, an adaptation of the 12th-century Tristan and Iseult legend. Gottfried's work is regarded, alongside the Nibelungenlied and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, as one of the great narrative masterpieces of the German Middle Ages. He is probably also the composer of a small number of surviving lyrics. His work became a source of inspiration for Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (1865).
Yvain, the Knight of the Lion is an Arthurian romance by French poet Chrétien de Troyes. It was written c. 1180 simultaneously with Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, and includes several references to the narrative of that poem. It is a story of knight-errantry, in which the protagonist Yvain is first rejected by his lady for breaking a very important promise, and subsequently performs a number of heroic deeds in order to regain her favour. The poem has been adapted into several other medieval works, including Iwein and Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain.
Erec and Enide is the first of Chrétien de Troyes' five romance poems, completed around 1170. It is one of three completed works by the author. Erec and Enide tells the story of the marriage of the titular characters, as well as the journey they go on to restore Erec's reputation as a knight after he remains inactive for too long. Consisting of about 7000 lines of Old French, the poem is one of the earliest known Arthurian romances in any language, predated only by the Welsh prose narrative Culhwch and Olwen.
Lanzelet is a medieval romance written by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven after 1194. It is the first treatment of the Lancelot tradition in German, and contains the earliest known account of the hero's childhood with the Lady of the Lake-like figure in any language. The poem consists of about 9,400 lines arranged in 4-stressed Middle High German couplets. It survives complete in two manuscripts and in fragmentary form in three others.
Gregorius or The Good Sinner is a Middle High German narrative poem by Hartmann von Aue. Written around 1190 in rhyming couplets, it tells the story of a child born of the incestuous union of a brother and sister, who is brought up in a monastery, ignorant of his origins, marries his mother, repents of his sins and becomes pope.
Iwein is a Middle High German verse romance by the poet Hartmann von Aue, written around 1200. An Arthurian tale freely adapted from Chrétien de Troyes' Old French Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, it tells the story of Iwein (Yvain), a knight of King Arthur's Round Table. It was written after Hartmann's Erec, and is generally taken to be his last work.
Amis and Amiloun is a Middle English romance in tail rhyme from the late thirteenth century. The 2508-line poem tells the story of two friends, one of whom is punished by God with leprosy for engaging in a trial by ordeal after the other has been seduced and betrayed. The poem is praised for the technical competency displayed in the stanzaic organization, though its quality as a chivalric romance has been debated. It is found in four manuscripts ranging from c. 1330 to c. 1500, including the Auchinleck Manuscript.
Middle High German literature refers to literature written in German between the middle of the 11th century and the middle of the 14th. In the second half of the 12th century, there was a sudden intensification of activity, leading to a 60-year "golden age" of medieval German literature referred to as the mittelhochdeutsche Blütezeit. This was the period of the blossoming of Minnesang, MHG lyric poetry, initially influenced by the French and Provençal tradition of courtly love song. The same sixty years saw the composition of the most important courtly romances. again drawing on French models such as Chrétien de Troyes, many of them relating Arthurian material. The third literary movement of these years was a new revamping of the heroic tradition, in which the ancient Germanic oral tradition can still be discerned, but tamed and Christianized and adapted for the court.
Erec is a Middle High German poem written in rhyming couplets by Hartmann von Aue. It is thought to be the earliest of Hartmann's narrative works and dates from around 1185. An adaptation of Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide, it is the first Arthurian Romance in German.
Der Busant, also known as Der Bussard, is a Middle High German verse narrative, containing 1074 lines of rhyming couplets. The story tells of a love affair between the Princess of France and the Prince of England, who elope but are separated after a buzzard steals one of the princess's rings. After more than a year of separation, with the prince having gone mad and living as a wild man, they are reunited.
The Ambraser Heldenbuch is a 16th-century manuscript written in Early New High German, now held in the Austrian National Library. It contains a collection of 25 Middle High German courtly and heroic narratives along with some shorter works, all dating from the 12th and 13th centuries. For many of the texts it is the sole surviving source, which makes the manuscript highly significant for the history of German literature. The manuscript also attests to an enduring taste for the poetry of the MHG classical period among the upper classes.
Guiomar is the best known name of a character appearing in many medieval texts relating to the Arthurian legend, often in relationship with Morgan le Fay or a similar fairy queen type character.
Cyril William Edwards was a British medievalist and translator. Teaching in London and Oxford, he published extensively on the medieval German lyric and Old High German literature, and translated four of the major Middle High German verse narratives.
In the Middle High German (MHG) period (1050–1350) the courtly romance, written in rhyming couplets, was the dominant narrative genre in the literature of the noble courts, and the romances of Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg and Wolfram von Eschenbach, written c. 1185 – c. 1210, are recognized as classics.
Der arme Heinrich is a German-language opera in three acts by Hans Pfitzner to a libretto by James Grun. The premiere was at the Mainz Municipal Theatre on 2 April 1895.
