Henderson, Ingeborg. “Manuscript Illustrations as Generic De-
terminants in Wirnt von Gravenberg’s Wigalois,” in Genres in
Medieval German Literature, ed. Hubert Heinen and Ingeborg
Henderson. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1986.
Kapteyn, J. M. N. Wigalois, der Ritter mit dem Rade. Bonn:
Klopp, 1926.
Thomas, J. W. Wigalois, The Knight of Fortune’s Wheel. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1977.
Ingeborg Henderson
WITTENWILER, HEINRICH
(ca. 1350–ca. 1450)
Author of the Ring, a comic-didactic verse satire of the
early fi fteenth century, Heinrich Wittenwiler employs
chiefl y High Alemannic language in the poem, with
occasional Bavarianisms. As shown by his knowledge
of the local dialect, which he places in the mouths of
the peasants in the Ring, Wittenwiler probably stemmed
from the Toggenburg area of Switzerland. The poem
exists in only one manuscript, located in the Meiningen
(Thuringia) archives.
Wittenwiler served as advocatus curiae at the epis-
copal court in Constance, where, as a high offi cial of
the bishop, he would have moved in circles favorable to
the Austrian nobility and inimical to disruptive forces
such as the city guilds and the Bund ob dem See (Dutch
marine commerce alliance). His use of Sachliteratur
(technical writing) shows him to have been a man of
great learning and wide-ranging interests. He is men-
tioned in documents from the last two decades of the
fourteenth century, although the composition of the Ring
falls in the fi rst decade of the fi fteenth, probably during
the episcopate of Albrecht Blarer.
Wittenwiler derived the basic structure of the Ring
from the short force Metzen hochzît (Metz’s Wedding),
but expanded it to almost ten thousand lines with ex-
tensive allegorical, didactic, and satirical passages. Set
in the village of Lappenhausen, the fi rst of three sec-
tions deals with Bertschi Triefnas’s devotion to Mätzli
Rüeren-zumph, the antipode of all ideals of courtly
beauty. During his wooing, Bertschi accidentally in-
fl icts a head wound on Mätzli, who, while receiving
treatment, is impregnated by the doctor Chrippenchra.
To cover up his misdeed, the doctor persuades Mätzli
to marry Bertschi.
In the second section, a lengthy debate on the pros
and cons of marriage, as well as instruction for Berts-
chi in religion, manners, virtue, hygiene, and home
economics, precede the wedding. At the wedding feast,
the villagers display every possible form of bad man-
ners and fi nally abandon themselves to wild dancing. A
minor incident at the dance leads, in the third section, to
an all-out war between Lappenhausen and neighboring
Nissingen. The confl ict escalates until it involves most of
southwestern Germany and fi gures from the Germanic
epics. Fro Laichdenman, the local astrologer, betrays
Lappenhausen to its enemies, and the village burns to the
ground. Bertschi, the only survivor, laments his failure
to follow the wise teachings of his mentors and moves
to the Black Forest to lead the life of a hermit.
To underscore Wittenwiler’s method of alternating
didacticism with bucolic bawling (gpauren gschrai),
the manuscript differentiates by means of red or green
marginal stripes those passages that can serve as stylis-
tic models (red) from those that satirize peasant mores
(green). Read as an allegorical work, the Ring strongly
associates peasants with images of a carnal and sinful
humanity; read politically, it expresses the disgust of an
urban nobility faced with a series of peasant revolts.Further Reading
Jones, George Fenwick, trans. Wittenwiler’s Ring and the Anony-
mous Scots Poem Colkelbie Sow. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1956; rpt. New York: AMS, 1969.
Lutz, Eckhart Conrad. Spiritualis Fornicatio. Sigmaringen:
Thorbecke, 1990.
Plate, Bernward. Heinrich Wittenwiler. Darmstadt: Wissen-
schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977.
Riha, Ortrun. Die Forschung zu Heinrich Wittenwilers “Ring”
1851–1988. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 1990.
Wießner, Edmund. Heinrich Wittenwilers “Ring.” Leipzig:
Redam, 1931; rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchge-
sellschaft, 1964.
Wittenwiler, Heinrich. Der Ring, ed. Rolf Bräuer, George F.
Jones, and Ulrich Müller. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1990
[facsimile ed.].
Jim OgierWITZ, KONRAD
(ca. 1400/1410–1445/1446)
In 1896, Daniel Burckhardt of the Öffentlichen Kunst-
sammlung in Basle published his observations on the
stylistic similarity between the panels of an incomplete
Heilsspiegel Altar (Altar of Human Salvation) in Basle
and the panels from the St. Peter Altar in Geneva, which
are signed by Konrad Witz and dated 1444. This artist,
whose distinctive style had little infl uence on later Ger-
man art, had been forgotten since his death.
Konrad Witz was probably born in Rottweil in Würt-
temberg circa 1400–1410; he is fi rst documented by his
entrance into the Basel painters’ guild on June 21, 1434.
The Council of Basle (1431–1437), which brought high
church offi cials to the city, thus increasing the possibili-
ties for important artistic commissions, was probably
the motivation for his move. On January 10, 1435,
he became a citizen of Basle, and he married shortly
thereafter. In 1441 and 1442 he was paid for unknown
paintings in the Kornhaus (granary). One of the wings ofWITZ, KONRAD