Tagelied

Tagelied or dawn song, term applied to Middle High German poems which reflect in dialogue the parting of lovers at dawn. Tagelieder occur in Provençal poetry under the designation alba, and the German forms show some traces of derivation from this source. The dawn song was, however, current in European and oriental poetry. The earliest German Tagelieder are a poem attributed to Dietmar von Eist and an untypical example by Heinrich von Morungen. In the former the song of a bird leads to the awakening, in Morungen's poem it is the light of day. The characteristic figure of the Tagelied is later the watchman (Wächter), who by his horn or his voice rouses the lovers from their ecstasy and insists upon their parting. The most notable author of Tagelieder is Wolfram von Eschenbach, with whom the watchman develops into a symbol of the forces opposing the illicit lovers, as in the poem beginning ‘Sîne klâwen/durch die wolken sint geslagen’ (Seine Klauen durch die Wolken haben geschlagen).

The form represents the only permitted intrusion of the sensual realization of love into the tenuous web of erotic stylization, which constitutes Minnedienst. Even this element of reality in the Tagelied is, however, a convention; the consummation is fictitious. The view has been expressed that the Tagelied represents a safety-valve for the stresses implicit in the Minnedienst relationship.

From the time of Wolfram to the 15th c. Tagelieder are a widely acknowledged form of lyric poetry. The social level of the form tends eventually to sink, and burlesque elements intrude. Among the more notable poets of Tagelieder after Wolfram are Otto von Botenlauben, Ulrich von Singenberg, Ulrich von Winterstetten, Konrad von Würzburg, Hadlaub, Steinmar, and Oswald von Wolkenstein. An example also occurs in Carmina Burana.