(fl mid-13th century). German Minnesinger. The details of his life can be gathered only from the songs transmitted in the Manessesesche Liederhandschrift (D-HEu cpg 848, without music). According to these works, he had connections with Duke Friedrich II ‘der Streitbare’ of Austria, with King Konrad IV, and with a duke in Bavaria; he took part in a crusade or a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. That this journey was actually the fifth crusade of Friedrich II is uncertain, as is the assumption that he came from a Bavarian noble family of ministerial rank.
Six Leiche, six Minnelieder, three Sprüche and a pilgrim or crusade song by him are extant. In his lyric verse there is a mixture of gravity and humour, of courtliness and satirical parody. The dance-songs depict the joys of life and of courtly love with a new and realistic spontaneity which reveals the influence of Neidhart von Reuental in particular. The transmission of melodies for the authentic works began much later; the ‘Busslied’ (penitential song), transmitted with music in the Jenaer Liederhandschrift (D-Ju E1.f.101), is doubtful. Although Tannhäuser was not named as one of the 12 alte Meister, he was named by Hans Folz and others, his Töne were used by Meistersinger until well into the 17th century, and melodies for them were used as examples in books of lieder.
The legend of Tannhäuser, who went to Venus's mountain but then sought absolution from the Pope, dates from the ‘Tannhäuser-Ballade’ of the mid-15th century, which was available in print from the early 16th century. The hero of the ballad is certainly meant to be the poet, but motifs from older sagas are also worked into the narrative. It was extensively used and reworked in 19th-century German literature: after Tieck's Novelle of 1800, entitled Der getreue Eckhart und der Tannhäuser, a reprint of the ballad apeared in Achim von Arnim's and Clemens Brentano's collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Poems by Heine (1836), Geibel (1838) and Brentano (Romanzen vom Rosenkrantz, published posthumously in 1852), the operas of Wagner (1845) and C.A. Mangold (1846, later revived as Der getreue Eckart) and Grisebach's epic poem Der neue Tannhäuser (1869) followed in the same tradition.
Editions: Der Dichter Tannhäuser: Leben - Gedichte - Sage, ed. J. Siebert (Halle, 1934) [S] [standard complete text edn]
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Tannhäuser, ed. H. Lomnitzer and U. Müller, Litterae, xiii (Göppingen, 1973) [LM] [complete edn of authentic texts and melodies, incl. facs. and comprehensive bibliography] |
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Hie vor do stuont min Dinc also (text only), S xii, ? text for the ‘Hofton’ in several Meistersinger MSS (D-Ju E1.f.100, f.138, WRtl Q576.1, f.71v, PL-WRu 356 [lost: Adam Puschman's Singebuch]) with different texts and modified melody; ed. G Münzer, Das Singebuch des Adam Puschman (Leipzig, 1906/R), 70 |
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Ich lobe ein Wîp, diu ist noch bezzer banne guot (text only), S iv, model for conductus ‘Syon egredere nunc de cubilibus’ (D-Mbs Clm 5539, f.161); ed. in Kuhn, 111ff, and LM 59–70 |
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Staeter dienest der ist guot (text only), S ix, ? text for ‘Des Danhusers luode Leich’ (D-Mbs Cgm 4997 (Colmar MS), ff.72–73v, with inc. melody and the text ‘Mir tet gar wol ein lieber Won’); LM 46ff (facs.) and 72 (edn) |
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Ez ist hivte eyn wunnychlicher Tac (‘Busslied’), S p.207, in the Jena MS (D-Ju E1.f.101), f.42v–43, ascribed ‘Der Tanvser’ but text and music doubtful; LM 29ff (facs.) and 71 (edn) |
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‘Tanhusers heupt Ton oder gulden Ton’, D-Mbs Cgm 4997, f.785 with text ‘Gelückes waer mir Nôt’, ? spurious; text is 14th- or 15th-century Meistersinger Spruch; melody probably also later; variants in other 15th- and 16th-century MSS; ed. P. Runge, Die Sangesweisen der Colmarer Handscrift (Leipzig, 1896/R), 169 |
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‘Langer Ton’, unauthentic; in several 16th- and 17th-century Meistersinger MSS |
H. Spanke: ‘Eine neue Leich-Melodie’, ZMw, xiv (1931–2), 385–97 [on S iv]
M. Lang and J. Müller-Blattau, eds.: Zwischen Minnesang und Volkslied: die Lieder der Berliner Handschrift Germ. fol. 922 (Berlin, 1941) [on S ix, pp.27–9, 58, 90]
H. Kuhn: Minnesangs Wende (Tübingen, 1952, 2/1967) [on S iv]
K.H. Bertau: Sangverslyrik: über Gestalt und Geschichtlichkeit mittelhochdeutscher Lyrik am Beispiel des Leichs (Göttingen, 1964) [on S iv]
R.J. Taylor: The Art of the Minnesinger (Cardiff, 1968)
M. Lomnitzer and U. Müller, eds.: Tannhäuser (Göppingen, 1973) [with bibliography]
J.W. Thomas: Tannhäuser: Poet and Legend (Chapel Hill, NC, 1974)
B. Wachinger: ‘Tannhäuser’: ‘Tannhäuser-Ballade’, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. K. Ruh and others (Berlin, 2/1977–)
C. Petzsch: ‘Tannhäusers Lied IX in C umd im cgm 4997’, Euphorion, lxxv (1981), 303–24
J. Kühnel: ‘Der Minnesänger Tannhäuser: zu Form und Funktion des Minnesangs im 13. Jahrhundert’, Ergebnisse der XXI. Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises ‘Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters’: Greifswald 1986 (Greifswald, 1989), 125–51
H. Ragotzky: ‘Minnethematik, Herrscherlob und höfischer Maitanz: zum I. Leich des Tannhäusers’, ibid., 101–25
S. Spencer: ‘Tannhäuser und der Tannhusaere’, Opern und Opernfiguren: Festschrift für Joachim Herz, ed. U. and U. Müller (Anif and Salzburg, 1989), 241–7
F. Schanze and B. Wachinger, eds.: Repertorium der Sangsprüche und Meisterlieder, v (Tübingen, 1991), 427–35
R. Bleck: ‘Tannhäusers Aufbruch zum Kreuzzug: das Busslied der Jenaer Liederhandschrift’, Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, xliii (1993), 257–66
B. Wachinger: ‘Vom Tannhäuser zur Tannhäuser-Ballade’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, cxxv (1996), 125–41
BURKHARD KIPPENBERG/LORENZ WELKER