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"The death of the Emperor Frederick Il in 1250 marked a tuming point in German affairs. When in 1212 the young King of Sicily had taken Germany by storm, driving north his Welf rival Otto IV of Brunswick and securing the support of the German princes, it had seemed that a new golden age had begun. Walther von der Vogelweide at last received his "lêhen", and praised his new patron as "der edel künec, der milte künec". ln Aachen a crusade was proclaimed for the liberation of Jerusalem. Comparisons were made with the Emperor's grandfather, Frederick Barbarossa. The house of Hohenstaufen was again in the ascendency. But these high expectations were always unrealistic. Frederick's crusading vows became a thom in his flesh; his enemies held him to them, but obstructed him as he sought to fulfil them. Much of his energy was taken up in a dual struggle against insurgency in his restive Lombard states, and against the bitter invective of the papal propagandists. Although Innocent lll had been the prime sponsor of the young Emperor, Honorius III became alan·ned at the prospect of a union of the crowns of Sicily and the Empire, and Gregory IX and Innocent IV became determined to break the power of the Hohenstaufen dynasty once and for all. The popes did not have it all their own way. For the most part, the German princes remained loyal, pleased to have an emperor who interfered so little in their affairs. Frederick‘s policy of diplomacy and compromise attracted more sympathy than that of the Pope who refused to meet and treat with him. His early death, however, left his son Conrad IV in a weak position from which he was unable to recover, and within twenty years the last Hohenstaufen rulerwas deposed. The impact of these events on the intellectual climate in Germany was immense. After Frederick's death, there was an upsurge in apocalyptic preaching, and much of the literature of the period was diffused with a sense of nostalgia. It is in this light that we must read the account of the life of Frederick II which is offered by the Viennese patrician, Jansen Enike. Enikel‘s Universal Chronicle ('Weltchronik') recounts the history of the world from Adam to Frederick. It was written about 1272, just four years after the death of Conradin, the last of the Staufen line. Enikel was probably born in the 1230s, and his own lifespan exactly coincided with the years of Hohenstaufen decline. His account ol Frederick's life has limited value as history, but casts an interesting sidelight on the confusion of impressions which had gathered in popular lore. In keeping with the rest of his chronicle, it is anecdotal, falling naturally into ten sections of differing lengths, most of which are to some extent self-contained units. Together, these fill over thirteen hundred lines, making Frederick Enikel's most comprehensively treated post-biblical protagonist; only Moses and David are dealt with at greater length."
The Kaiserchronik is generically puzzling. In essence it is a spiritual world chronicle, but it lacks the usual historiographical systematisations of its theological content. However it does have three disputations, an unusual feature in a chronicle which has to date not been adequately explained. This essay argues, on the basis of comparisons with works in other literary forms, that these passages function as key expressions of the controlling idea of the entire work, namely the progress of the Gospel from the heathen to the Christian Empire, and that they are strategically located within the chronicle at the turning points in the success of Christian mission.
"[...] In 1639, Martin Opitz rescued for us the only complete surviving text of the Annolied (circa 1083), and now Graeme Dunphy has made available a reprint of the Opitz edition and with it Opitz’s prologue and notes, a new English translation, and the translator’s informative notes on the translation and on Opitz’s commentary. In his prologue Opitz expresses the purpose of the edition, which is to demonstrate that the German language was inherited by his contemporaries in an unbroken line from earliest times. This is a strikingly early formulation of the romantic thesis the Grimm brothers developed later. Thus by including Opitz’s prologue and notes on his sources and philological explanations, Dunphy gives us the essential tools to re-invigorate research in three areas: Opitz, who is too frequently thought of as a narrowly focused poeticist, the serious study of philology and history in the sixteenth century, and most importantly, the Annolied itself. [...]" Quelle: Maria Dobozy : http://www.iaslonline.de/index.php?vorgang_id=751