2023-05-23 11:48:00
An May 18 of this year came the news that Unesco had accepted 64 new proposals for inclusion in the Memory of the World, including four from Germany. A total of 496 documents have now been awarded, 28 of which are German. The new ones include the Codex Manesse, the Behaim Globe, documents from the history of the Hanseatic League and manuscripts from the court school of Emperor Charlemagne.
What you need to know: The Documentary World Heritage is the most recently added department within the World Heritage – established in 1992, after the World Cultural and Natural Heritage in the 1970s. In its efforts to bring about peace, Unesco, which was founded in 1945 and was shaken up by the impending destruction of Egyptian art during the construction of the Aswan Dam, decided to place culture and nature under international protection first. In Germany, for example, the Roman Limes and the old town of Regensburg were selected as cultural heritage. In terms of natural heritage, it was the North German Wadden Sea. The award was repeatedly withdrawn, as in the case of the Dresden Elbe valley after the construction of a bridge. Deforestation in the Polish Bialowieza Forest is currently the concern of the European Court of Justice.
The same is not to be feared in the case of documentary heritage. The original copy of Beethoven’s 9th symphony or the Gutenberg Bible are well protected. In this case, the goals are different. The Unesco Commission has highlighted four points: the memory of documents that represent turning points in history, their role as a source of knowledge for the formation of society, an increase in awareness of the importance of the respective texts, finally, the convenient access through the modern ones digital media. Does this apply to the choice of the Codex Manesse or the Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (Sigle C) as a collection of medieval poetry?
Anyone who has seen the codex at Heidelberg University – as a facsimile, the original is only rarely shown on special occasions – will remember the splendor. The double page with text and picture of the most important German love poet Walther von der Vogelweide is open, the text in the most beautiful Gothic script with colored initials at the beginning of each stanza, the picture of the poet in a blue robe on green stone, his legs crossed, like his poem “I saz ûf eime steine” corresponds, all in a colorful frame and in a large format of 35 x 25 centimeters.
Let’s add that the bound book has 426 sheets of parchment, that is 852 pages. In the entire Middle Ages, there is only one comparable in Bibles. It was created in the period shortly after 1300 to around 1330/40. Which immediately touches on one of the most interesting points: Why so late? At that time, Walther von der Vogelweide had been dead for 100 years.
At the last moment
But that’s it. We are dealing with a collection of texts which, with the last entries, is sufficient for the present at that time, but for the most part belongs to the past at that time – if you will: a case of nostalgia. A Zurich patrician named Rüdiger Manesse and his son collected something that was in danger of disappearing. He was not the first and only collector, but by far the most important. Two collections of poetry preceded it – the Kleine Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (sigle A) from around 1250 and the Weingartner Liederhandschrift (sigle B) from around 1300. Both of these also come from a time when the peak of this art had already passed. A mostly offers “classics” like Walther von der Vogelweide, B reinforces older minnesang like songs by Heinrich von Veldeke. C draws from both and surpasses them.
But again: why so late? The great epic poets, Hartmann von Aue or Wolfram von Eschenbach, for example, were immediately handed down in extensive manuscripts; one speaks of more than 100 cases compared to these three. One reason must have been that epics were intended for lectures, but became reading material early on, while songs, on the other hand, could only be imagined as sung for a long time – the writing in their case is almost a paradox. Only in times when the lively presentation receded was there a reason for the written fixation and thus preservation at the last moment.
Seen in this way, the Codex Manesse (along with its predecessors) actually fits the media turning point demanded by UNESCO – from oral to written form. But a source of knowledge for shaping society? One can affirm this, too, if one considers that in the preferentially collected Minnesang there is a special version of love, an extremely strange love (by today’s standards): the continuous theme lies in approaching a socially unavailable lady and in lamenting about her Unattainability – appropriate to the feudal conditions with their ideas of loyalty that go beyond all resistance. Not a role model, but a great cultural alternative, developed in all its complexity, for example when Walther von der Vogelweide both takes up the concept and criticizes it by demanding mutual love with corresponding fulfillment.
In any case, the texts can be read as the exhaustion of a concept, although the structure itself appears remarkable. Of course, this love is courtly love, even courtly play, tied to the aristocracy of the time. But this also characterizes the structure: the sequence of the authors with their respective works is not determined in terms of time or space, but follows the principle of social status. It begins with an emperor, Henry VI, followed by three kings, then a large series of dukes, counts palatine and counts, before it is the turn of gentlemen, simple nobles, and last but not least citizens. Walther von der Vogelweide, for example, the most prominent of all authors, is not at the beginning, but with the men, as number 42, two positions ahead of Wolfram von Eschenbach, who wrote a few love songs in addition to the great epics.
“A joyful national event”
How important this principle was to the collectors – the Manesses and certainly a circle of advisors and suppliers – is particularly evident in the treatment of the additives. Apparently they started with a basic stock of about 350 stanzas and divided them into several layers. When new finds appeared, they had to be classified according to the social class of their authors. For important Central German princes, the first layers were untied or individual sheets were sewn in (with red threads) in order to maintain the principle.
The work was completed around 1330/40 and began its course through history, certainly with crime-ridden traits. The valuable book was sold several times and came into the possession of the Elector of the Palatinate, who left Heidelberg after his failed attempt to become King of Bohemia (“Winter King”) and took the Codex Manesse with him on the way to exile – lucky, because the Bibliotheca Palatina fell into the hands of the Catholic League, which had the entire inventory transported to Rome. A large part returned in 1816 in the course of the Congress of Vienna, but not the Codex Manesse, which was now in Paris, where Jacob Grimm discovered it. In 1888 it was bought back for exchange objects and the gigantic sum of 400,000 gold marks (about 7 million euros).
The event was widely celebrated in Heidelberg and offers an interesting look at the assessment of the importance of this work. In the greeting to Emperor Friedrich III. there is talk of the “precious document” that was “acquired again for the German Reich”. And then: “The loss of the Manessian manuscript, which in itself was of great importance for the University of Heidelberg, was shaped by the conditions under which it occurred, which left the mark of a deeply painful damage to the intellectual aspirations of our people.” The return was accordingly “a joyful one national event” “at the time of the establishment of a powerful German empire”.
If it weren’t so nationalistic, it almost reads like an application to UNESCO. In any case, the claim to a national heritage, which is one of the basic requirements for inclusion under the World Document Heritage, rings through. The German Unesco ambassador put it somewhat more modestly and also more appropriately when he attributed the Codex Manesse to the “memory of mankind” and emphasized that Germany and France had a gratifying cooperation in the application. The required increase in awareness of the importance of the work is there, the media treatment was only the last consequence with the posting on the net for free use.
#Middle #Ages #minstrelsy #thriller #WELT