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Dietrich Von Bern and “Historical” Narrative in the German Middle Ages

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Dietrich Von Bern and “Historical” Narrative in the German Middle Ages 1 Dietrich von Bern and “Historical” Narrative in the German Middle Ages: An Investigation of Strategies for Establishing Credibility in Four Poems of the Middle High German Dietrichepik by Jonathan Martin Senior Honors Thesis Submitted for German and MEMS, March 26th, 2010 Advised by Professor Helmut Puff © Jonathan Seelye Martin 2010 2 Acknowledgements My special thanks are owed to Dr. Helmut Puff, who has made his advice, time, and considerable knowledge available to me throughout the process of writing this thesis. He has steered me away from many misconceptions and improved my writing for clarity and style. It is very much thanks to him that this thesis appears in the form that it currently does. I also must thank him for repeatedly reminding me that one is never fully satisfied with an end product: there is always something left to improve or expand upon, and this is especially true of an overly ambitious project like mine. In a large part due to his wonderful help, I hope to continue working on and improving my knowledge of this topic, which at first I despised but have come to love, in the future. My thanks also go out to Drs. Peggy McCracken, Kerstin Barndt, George Hoffmann, and Patricia Simons, who have at various times read and commented on drafts of my work and helped guide me through the process of writing and researching this thesis. My other professors and instructors, both here and at Freiburg, have also been inspirations for me, and I must especially thank Maria “Frau” Caswell for teaching me German, Dr. Robert Kyes for teaching me Middle High German, Gina Soter for teaching me Latin, Björn-Michael Harms of Freiburg for introducing me to the Dietrichepik to begin with, and Dr. Lenka Jiroušková of Freiburg for guiding me into Medieval Latin. In addition, I must thank my friend Esei Murakishi who was kind enough to read through my whole draft from a modern English and Philosophy perspective. My mother, father, sister, and other friends, though they have little idea what I am writing about, have been a great source of support as well. Amicis meis Quinto et Scipioni et Telemacho et alteris amicis amicabusque dicendum est quod (si mihi structuram Latinæ mediævalis permittetis) auxilium vestrum adversis interdum in rebus valde mihi sustinuit per ultimi tempus anni mei apud Universitatem Michiganiensem. Vitam longam prosperitatemque ut professores aut profestrices aut professionales alii opto ut habeatis. Gratias vobis omnibus ago et semper agebo. 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction: Saga, History, Aventiure, and Dietrich von Bern ................................................ 4 2. Historicity and Fictionality in the High and Late Middle Ages ............................................. 18 2.1. Defining Fabula, Argumentum, Historia and Veritas ...................................................... 19 2.2. The Debate in the Reception over Theoderic/Dietrich von Bern ...................................... 28 The Historiographically Accepted Life of Theoderic the Great .......................................... 30 Eleventh-Century Reception: The Quedlinburg Annals and Frutolf of Michelsberg ........... 32 Twelfth-Century Evidence: The Kaiserchronik ................................................................... 36 Thirteenth-Century Evidence ............................................................................................. 40 Fourteenth-Century Evidence: Heinrich of Munich, and Jakob Twinger ............................ 41 2.3. The Dietrich-saga‟s Disputed Historicity in Learned Reception ...................................... 46 3. Historical Dietrichepik: The Dialog between Learned Writing and Dietrichs Flucht .............. 47 3.1 Truth-Claims and Signs of Self-Reflexivity in Dietrichs Flucht ....................................... 50 2.2. Dialog between Dietrichs Flucht and the Learned Tradition: The Poem‟s Credibility ..... 59 3.3. The Lack of Fantastical Elements in Dietrichs Flucht ..................................................... 64 3.4. Defended Historicity in Dietrichs Flucht ........................................................................ 68 4. The Aventiure-Like Poems: the Eckenlied and the Virginal ................................................... 70 4.1. The Eckenlied and the Debate surrounding Dietrich von Bern ........................................ 73 Oral Hearsay: Praising nach wane .................................................................................... 76 Dietrich‟s Ride to Hell Mirrored in Eckenlied E7?............................................................. 83 Bringing Dietrich into Focus: Ecke‟s Search for Dietrich; Dietrich‟s Ride to Jochgrimm .. 87 Truth-Claim, Irony, and Further Signs of Self-Reflexivity in the Eckenlied ........................ 94 The Eckenlied as Self-Aware ........................................................................................... 102 4.2. The Virginal and the Flow of Information ..................................................................... 103 Finding and Defining aventiure ....................................................................................... 107 Messengers, Letters, and Summaries ............................................................................... 114 Truth-Claim, Politics, and märchenhafte Unbestimmtheit................................................ 120 The Virginal between the Saga and Literate Poetry ......................................................... 133 4.3. Apud Germanos perdurarunt gigantes – On the Vorzeit ................................................ 134 4.4. Historical aventiure ...................................................................................................... 140 5. The Dietrichepik as “Probable” History ............................................................................... 141 Abreviations............................................................................................................................ 147 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 148 Primary Literature .............................................................................................................. 148 Secondary Literature ........................................................................................................... 149 4 1. Introduction: Saga, History, Aventiure, and Dietrich von Bern Who was Dietrich von Bern? If one were to ask a German-speaker from the Middle Ages, one might receive two different answers. The majority of German-speakers would probably say that Dietrich von Bern was an exile from his kingdom of Verona (Bern). He had been driven away by his uncle Ermenrich and lived in exile at the court of Etzel (Attila), King of the Huns, for thirty years before eventually reconquering his country. In addition to this story, which I will refer to as the exile-saga (in German, Fluchtsage), they would have said things about Dietrich which seem to us today to belong to a world of fantasy, namely that Dietrich went on numerous adventures wherein he fought dwarves, giants, and dragons. A few, especially clerics, might have then supplied a different picture, saying that Dietrich von Bern was an Ostrogothic king and Arian heretic who was born after Attila‟s and Ermenrich‟s (Ermanaric) deaths and who invaded Italy at the behest of the Byzantine emperor Zenon in order to drive the usurping barbarian Odoacer from Rome. There he ruled for thirty years before engaging in a persecution of Catholics and dying a sudden death at the hands of a vengeful God. One would receive, in short, two images of Dietrich, images which are not compatible. How is one to reconcile them? It is important to recognize that these two ideas of Dietrich von Bern derive from different sources of transmission. The story which clerics might tell is based on Latin chronicles about the Ostrogothic king Theoderic the Great, who ruled in Italy from 493 until his death in 526, and was indeed born around the time of Attila‟s death and long after the fourth century Gothic King Ermanaric.1 The majority response derives from a series of popular narratives 1 For a summary of the lives of these three major characters and a summary of theories for their changed roles in the exile-saga, see Joachim Heinzle (1999). Einführung in die mittelhochdeutsche Dietrichepik. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2-7. 5 transmitted to us today in a group of epic poems collectively known as the Dietrichepik.2 All in all, eleven extant poems are devoted to Dietrich‟s exploits, making him the most popular hero of the German Middle Ages.3 Those that deal with the exile-saga are called the historical Dietrichepik (historische Dietrichepik), referring to their more obviously historical nature from a contemporary standpoint: they emphasize battles, armies, kingship, and campaigns. The second group of Dietrich-narratives, those which contain such things as his exploits fighting dragons, giants, dwarves, and other heroes, are referred to as the aventiure-like Dietrichepik (aventiurehafte Dietrichepik). This label derives from the Middle High German word aventiure, meaning both a strange or wondrous event or series of events and the narration or reporting of that event or series of events. It emphasizes the supposed similarity of these poems to Arthurian romance.4 How could the differences between these two traditions, one popular and one clerical, have arisen? One could assume, as some scholars
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