Gottfried von Strassburg

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Gottfried von Strassburg (right of centre), miniature from the Heidelberger Liederhandschrift; in … (credit: Courtesy of the Universitätsbibliothek, Heidelberg, Ger.)

(died c. 1210) German poet, one of the greatest of the Middle Ages. Little is known of his life. His courtly epic Tristan und Isolde (c. 1210) is the classic version of the famous love story. The unfinished poem is based on an Anglo-Norman version of the story, which came from Celtic legend. One of the most perfect creations of the medieval courtly spirit, it is distinguished by its refined and elevated tone and its skillful technique.

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The German poet and romancer Gottfried von Strassburg (ca. 1165-ca. 1215) wrote "Tristan und Isolt," the best-known version of that famous love story.

There is little information about the life of Gottfried von Strassburg. He was not of noble lineage but a freeman, had a good education, moved in higher society, and was well versed in literature, German and French, and theology. He was municipal secretary in his native Strassburg. Except for Tristan und Isolt, some lost minnesongs, and a few gnomic poems (Sprüche), no other works are known. He completed about 20,000 lines of Tristan. Fortunately the later portion of his source, the French romance of Thomas of Brittany, is extant.

The tale that Gottfried tells only for "noble hearts," a select spiritual community in the courtly world, recounts the mission of Tristan to win a bride, the fair Isolt of Ireland, for his aging uncle Mark, King of Cornwall. He succeeds, but on the return he and Isolt by mistake drink a love potion intended by Isolt's mother for the King. Unwittingly they fall madly in love. So spontaneous, overwhelming, and supernal is this love that even after Isolt and Mark are married, the reader does not think of the lovers as adulterers but as living in a world of their own, that of the "courts of love." Sordidness is ruled out. Indeed, Gottfried creates the impression that this love may even partake of the nature of a transcendent emotion. And so one follows their secret, ingeniously planned trysts almost as a well-wisher. Just as the Grail assumes a deeper meaning in the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach, representing the acme of human striving on earth and toward heaven, so the love potion here connotes the means for the perfect expression of that courtly spirit of love which does not debase but ennobles man, yet not without a strong suggestion of heresy. In Gottfried as in Wolfram, however, human suffering must precede attainment.

Mark's suspicions are often aroused; finally the lovers are detected. Tristan flees to Brittany. He weds another Isolt - of the White Hand - but only in name. Secretly he still yearns for the other Isolt. Here Gottfried's poem breaks off. Had he continued, he would doubtless have followed the plot of Thomas, who tells how Tristan is wounded by a poisoned spear and can be healed only by the arts the first Isolt had learned from her sorceress mother. Against his wife's will, Isolt is sent for - to arrive in a ship with a white sail, a black one denoting that she is not aboard. She approaches, but his wife lies to the invalid that the ship has a black sail. He dies of grief, and when his beloved arrives, she too dies, of a broken heart.

Thomas found the originally crude story as a courtly romance, which he refined. Gottfried gave it a more spiritual, mystical quality. Two other poets before Gottfried, the German Eilhart (ca. 1185) and the Frenchman Béroul (ca. 1192), both deviating from the Thomas school, are inferior in many respects. Two major German continuators of Gottfried, depending upon Eilhart, were Ulrich von Türheim (ca. 1240) and Heinrich von Freiberg (ca. 1290), a more gifted poet than Ulrich, but neither measuring up to Gottfried.

Numerous more recent writers in England, America, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Russia have been attracted to the theme. Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (1859) neither deals with the legend as a whole nor follows Gottfried closely; it does, however, represent a magnificent distillation of the supernal love inherent in Gottfried's masterpiece.

Further Reading

Recent English translations of Gottfried's Tristan are by Edwin H. Zeydel (1948) and A. T. Hatto (1960). Zeydel summarizes less important parts but translates the rest in the original meter. Hatto, in prose, misses Gottfried's poetic spirit and elegance. Michael S. Batts, Gottfried von Strassburg (1969), is a general introduction to the poet and his work. Recommended for historical background is Roger S. Loomis, Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (1927).

Gottfried von Strassburg, Middle High German poet, was the author of Tristan. Little is known of Gottfried's life. He is presumed to have died c.1210 and to have written his poem for one Dietrich, whose name is spelt out in an acrostic at the beginning. Unlike most of his poet contemporaries, he was not of knightly birth and is referred to as meister, not herr. Living in Strasburg at the linguistic meeting-point of two cultures, he handled French with fluency and correctness; and he was also well acquainted with the classics. He was not a cleric, but he had probably enjoyed the educational opportunities of a monastery school. In Tristan he makes favourable mention of Heinrich von Veldeke, Hartmann von Aue, and Bligger von Steinach among epic poets, and of Reinmar and Walther von der Vogelweide among lyric writers, but is thought by some to express distaste for Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, though he abstains from mentioning Wolfram's name. Gottfried's epic poem is virtually his only work. The Minnelieder attributed to him in various MSS. are unauthentic; however, he is believed by some to have written two poetic Sprüche (see Spruch), which were formerly allocated to Ulrich von Lichtenstein.