German courtly romance: History and Key Facts

In the Middle High German (MHG) period (1050–1350) the courtly romance, written in rhyming couplets, was the dominant narrative genre in the literature of the noble courts, and the romances of Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg and Wolfram von Eschenbach, written c. 1185 – c. 1210, are recognized as classics.

The courtly romance has its origins in French-speaking courts around 1160, where various poets adapted the Matter of Rome (tales from the classical world) to the written vernacular, while Chrétien de Troyes did the same for the Matter of Britain (King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table). Chrétien, in particular, had a decisive influence on the development of the genre in German.

The earliest German romance is Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneas, based on the anonymous Old French Roman d'Enéas, part of the Matter of Rome, itself an adaptation of Virgil's Aeneid. As Gottfried von Strassburg put it, Veldeke "made the first graft on the tree of German" (Tristan, l. 4738f).

However, the main sources for MHG romances were four of Chrétien's Arthurian works: Erec et Enide, Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la charrette, Perceval ou le conte du Graal and Yvain. Three of the most significant and influential MHG romances had Chrétien as the main or sole source: Hartmann von Aue's Erec (the first Arthurian romance in German), his later Iwein, and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival. A fourth, Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, was based on the Tristan romance of the Anglo-Norman Thomas of Britain.

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