Talk:Walther von der Vogelweide

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Love poem

Removed the below. A Google search shows a single unauthoritative source that attributes it to Walther, and multiple sources that attribute it to an anonymous author. Google search. Replaceing this with a link to a collection of translated Walther poems. --Stbalbach 17:24, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Famous Love Poem

The following poem dates from around this period and has been attributed to Vogelweide

Middle High German original

Dû bist mîn, ich bin dîn.

des solt dû gewis sîn.

dû bist beslozzen

in mînem herzen;

verlorn ist das sluzzelîn:

dû muost ouch immer darinne sîn.

Modern German

Du bist mein! Ich bin dein.

Das soll gewiss so sein.

Du bist fest in meinem Herzen.

Verloren ist das Schlüsselein.

Musst wohl für immer drinnen sein!

English

You are mine, I am yours

Of that you may be sure

Deep within my heart

You're safely locked away

But I have lost the key

And there you'll ever stay

possible vandalism

I reverted the page to what seemed to be the last serious edit, as the latest version seemd a bit malformed, suggesting vandalism. Serious edits can be reinserted by viewing the history, in case I am wildly mistaken (which has been known to happen; don't take it personally). - CobaltBlueTony 17:54, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

article has again been vandalized. reverted some of it. LLLTS (talk) 05:15, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've now sorted all without editing any good faith edits, by retoring the last version of last year. (Editing and saving that version.)--Peter cohen (talk) 11:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Birthplace

Please check the official website of the municipality of Lajen (in Italy) [1] (in German) or [2] (in Italian, sorry no English version available): there is some evidence that that might be Vogelweide's birthplace. I think it would at least deserve to be mentioned... --Andylong 19:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wagner?

I know "in popular culture" sections are reviled, but should it be mentioned that Walther was chosen as a character in Tannhäuser (opera) and the inspiration for another Wagnerian Walther in Mastersingers? (Anyone know if Walther was in Wagner's source for the song contest E. T. A. Hoffman's story The Singer's Contest?)--Peter cohen 16:05, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Richard Wagner got inspired by the younger documents about "Meistersingers" of the 15th century. These 15th century "Meistersinger" had been inspired by von der Vogelweide, von Hagenau, von Eschenbach and others representing the golden age of medivial art in central Europe. --84.59.207.164 (talk) 18:37, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Improvement needed

There's an awful lot wrong with this article:

It's four years since someone added the "more references needed" template. In the entire article there are only two references to sources of facts, both relating to the debate about W's birthplace.
In particular, many facts, supposedly sourced from his songs, don't actually say which song.
There's not a word about the manuscripts which are the sources for his songs.
There's not a word about the surviving melodies.
W is the most significant German lyric poet before Goethe but the section on his works lists some modern editions and says nothing about the songs themselves, compared to the 700-odd words devoted to speculation about his life. Here, you can learn almost nothing about why W is regarded as a great love poet. The only "assessment" is from 1911, for goodness sake.
There's a vast body of W-scholarship in English and none of it is referred to here. Not even the coverage of W in more general literary histories and more general works on Minnesang, such as Olive Sayce's The medieval German lyric, 1150-1300.
There's stuff here which is simply not appropriate to a modern encyclopedia, e.g. "Although his religious poems sufficiently prove the sincerity of his Catholicism, he remained to the end of his days opposed to the extreme claims of the popes, whom he attacks with a bitterness which can be justified only by the strength of his patriotic feelings." The certainty of deriving the opinions and feelings of a poet, especially one who relies on patronage, from his work went out of fashion 50 years ago, and needs to be done, if at all, with much more subtlety.

This is an article that needs serious work. I will make a start and do what I can, but this is not something that can be done by a single editor.--Pfold (talk) 14:14, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this article is currently a mess. I have been meaning to try to clean it up for a while now, but I have not had the time and I do not have access to any resources about Walther von der Vogelweide's life. If you happen to have access to any such resources, I would greatly appreciate if you would improve this article. I will try to help you if I can, but I am not sure how much good I will be. I happened to glance over at the version of this article on the German Wikipedia and saw that it was considerably more extensive and much better cited than this article. I thought about trying to translate the German article over to English, but that would take a massive amount of time and I do not think I know enough German to able to accurately translate a whole article into English. As a side note, I am the one who created the articles "Under der linden" and Elegie (Walther von der Vogelweide), which are in desperate need of attention also. The article Palästinalied is in slightly better shape, but is still rather lacking in citations. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:51, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response. I could translate the German article easily enough, but even so it's quite poorly referenced, if better than the English article. On the other hand I suppose that might be a way to start (and actually Google translate doesn't do a bad job), if it was done section by section. But it's often easier to start from the sources than track down a source for all the existing material.

Having thought about it a bit more since I posted my original comment, I propose to start by tidying up the Works section into a more organized list of modern editions (though keeping the comments about the individual books), and adding new sections with basic info about manuscripts and melodies. Also, almost all those links under "See also" should really be under "External links" (though some are actually dead) - they're not WP articles.

Even if you don't actually make many edits, it would still be useful to know that someone with an interest in improving the article will look critically at any changes.--Pfold (talk) 17:35, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like you have a good plan for starting out. I will help all that I can. Perhaps I can find some useful sources online. I have already conducted some online research in the course of my previous work on this article and the other related articles. A quick Google search [3] turned up at least five works on the subject written within the past three decades. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:05, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I dug around in the article history and found that the original version of this article [4] was just copied straight from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, which explains why so much of the article's coverage is now outdated. It also explains the extended quotation from the 1911 Britannica that comprises almost the entire "Assessment" section. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:38, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I did wonder but didn't follow it up. Well, at least that means people won't mind if whole sections get replaced! --Pfold (talk) 19:12, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Other melodies aside from the Palästinalied

Pfold, you reverted an edit I made stating that the Palästinalied is the only one of Walther's songs for which a melody has survived; your objection was that "The Palästinalied *isn't* the only surviving melody." The article Palästinalied, however, directly states: "Palästinalied (Palestine Song) is a poem written in the early 13th century by Walther von der Vogelweide, the most celebrated German medieval lyric poet. The poem is written in Middle High German. It is the only song by Walter for which a melody has survived." Is this statement false? If so, which other songs by Walther has a melody survived for? --Katolophyromai (talk) 01:30, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I did check this before reverting. According to the Lachmann/Cormeau/Bein edition there are also melodies for the Ottenton and the Wiener Hofton and there are partial melodies for a couple of others. I'll try and do a section on the melodies in a couple of weeks when I get back from holiday. Anyway, the Palästinalied needs correcting. Thanks for your continued vigilance! --Pfold (talk) 09:15, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your response. I can see that you are clearly much more of an expert on this subject than I am and I am truly grateful for all your hard work. This article has been in desperate need of attention from an expert for years now and I can see that you are clearly qualified. Just make sure and cite all the information; even if the information is just basic facts, it still needs a citation because it still needs to be verifiable. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:32, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

After hearing your response, I went and did some more research about Walther von der Vogelweide's songs. This source ([5]), which was written only two years ago, contains a detailed discussion of the surviving melodies and the manner in which Walther's songs would have been originally performed. It says that the melodies of the "Ottenton" and the "Wiener Hofton" were preserved due to the melodies being reused by later Minnesang writers. It states that the melody for the Palästinalied has survived in full (which I already knew), but it also states that there are two more songs for which a partial melody has survived. Unfortunately, it does not clarify which two songs these are. Finally it states that there are six additional songs (including "Under der linden"!) with similar meters to certain surviving French melodies and which may have originally been sung to those melodies. This explains a lot. I have listened to numerous performances of "Under der linden," all of which used the same melody. I found this puzzling since I had read that the Palästinalied was the only song for which a melody had survived. Now I know that the melody I have been hearing is probably the French melody referred to in the article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:27, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The most easily accessible account from the acknowledged expert is at [6] - search for "zu den Melodien Walthers" --Pfold (talk) 19:10, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Crusade Involvement and Views?

the article currently states "He was active in urging the German princes to take part in the crusade of 1228, and may have accompanied the crusading army at least as far as his native Tirol", apparently without a source. Alexander Sager's Crusade in the Bedroom, published in Zeitschrift Für Deutsches Altertum Und Deutsche Literatur vol. 147 no. 2, seems to make the opposite claim -- but I'm not totally familiar with the historical context he's describing here, nor can I read the old German he quotes, so I figured I'd just drop the relevant passage here so someone else can figure out whether wiki's just wrong, Sager's just wrong, or the current article and Sager are talking about subtly different things.

"""
The effects of Innocent’s crusade measures caused an especial stir in literate courtly German circles in that year, with a highly propagandistic outcome. As is well known, several of Walther von der Vogelweide’s political poems (ʻSpruchlieder’) were targeted at another directive announced in ʻQuia maior’, the setting up of a “concave trunk” (truncus concavus; Walther termed this a stoc) in churches throughout Germany to collect donations from the laity in order to finance the crusade. Walther saw this measure as part of a cynical campaign to drain money from Germany and weaken the German emperor politically. His poetic intervention had a wide resonance and possibly even a significant real-world impact. Thomasin von Zerklaere, in his bitter critique of the minnesinger, accuses him of damaging the crusade recruitment effort:

ich waen daz alles sîn gesanc,
beide kurz unde lanc,
sî got niht sô wol gevallen,
sô im daz ein muoz missevallen,
wan er hât tûsent man betoeret,
daz si habent überhoeret
gotes und des bâbstes gebôt
""" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.178.5.141 (talk) 16:42, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Famous individual works?

One cannot learn from the current article about any specific poems or melodies. None stick out? Did he create no new story or tune, or any memorable variation or rendition of older, classical themes? Arminden (talk) 15:46, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See the lead's last paragraph Aza24 (talk) 20:46, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]