WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE. – Poet and knight, b. ca. 1170, perhaps originally from Tyrol, d. after 1228.
His poetic beginnings took place at the Court of Vienna, and he subsequently wandered about and was received at the other German courts (the expense books of Bishop Wolfger of Passau record an expenditure of five «soldos longos» for the gift of a cloak to W.). In the struggle between Church and Empire, he sided with imperial authority, supporting it with fierce exhortatory poems or Sprüche. He decisively opposed the temporal power of the popes, and in general one can discern in his Sprüche almost a desire for reform and hostility toward the Latin clergy. W. also advocated the launching of crusades. Yet not all his poetry is polemical and a vigorous supporter of his German people. In spirit and form, it is principally linked to that of the Minnestinger (singers of love), and it had delicate and gentle tones. Some of these poems of his—one of his hymns to the Virgin and the Trinity is beautiful—place him among the loftiest voices of the entire German medieval lyric tradition. Having reached full maturity, W. concentrates on himself, thoughtfully analyzing the transience and the futile striving of human desires. Notable is the poem that begins: Owe war sist verswunden alliu miniu jar? («Alas, where have all my years vanished?»).
1900; F. Vogt – M. Koch, St. della lett. tedesca, I, Italian trans., Turin 1912, pp. 214–28; A. Linacher, W. von d. V., Florence 1927; A. Farinelli, W. von d. V., in the volume Poesia germanica, Milan 1937, pp. 15–35; F. Wagemann, Die Religiosität W. I., Heidelberg 1938; F. Martini, Dent. Literaturgesch., 4th ed., Stuttgart 1952, p. 66 ff. Lanfranco Fiore