from between 1213 and 1218 that bear the seal of the
margrave Dietrich of Meissen. In one of the documents,
Morungen is described as a retired soldier (miles emeri-
tus), who has received for his good service a yearly pen-
sion of ten marks. He apparently gave this pension to
the cloister of St. Thomas in Leipzig. According to later
sources, Morungen died in the monastery in 1222. Since
Dietrich of Meissen was the son-in-law of Hermann of
Thuringia, patron of Wolfram von Eschenbach and oth-
ers, the records thus place Morungen at a court that was
a center of literary activity in the German-speaking area
in the early thirteenth century. Since Morungen hailed
from an area controlled by the Hohenstaufen family, it
is quite possible that Heinrich could have learned his
craft at the court of Frederick I Barbarossa. As a poet,
then, Morungen could possibly have appeared and/or
performed at the court of Meissen contemporaneously
with poets such as Walther von der Vogelweide.
While it is not known whether Morungen was a pro-
fessional poet, he was one of the fi rst Latin-educated
secular poets (Minnesänger) in Germany; probably there
was no other poet of the time who owed so much to the
Latin poet Ovid. Morungen’s adaptations of classical
Ovidian themes infl uenced such younger contempo-
raries, as Herbort von Fritzlar. Morungen’s poems are
dated approximately twenty years before the documents
that show his name. Characteristic is his formal style,
artistically advanced, yet owing much to the style of the
earlier French troubadors. Formal stylistic connections
to the school of Friedrich von Hausen (such as rhymed
strophes and dactyls) and Morungen’s later infl uence
on Walther von der Vogelweide suggest that Morungen
wrote before 1200. Although a defi nitive chronology
has not been established, 115 strophes, arranged in 35
poems, are attributed to Morungen.
Morungen is known primarily, not for his style, but
for his use of images and symbols. The images grow
out of the senses; foremost among these is sight: mir-
rors, windows, dreams, colors, dawn and twilight. As
a visual person (Augenmensch), Morungen describes
love that centers around vision and the contemplation
of the beloved. It is a woman’s beauty, not her virtue,
that awakens in men the desire for love. Morungen
does not, however, focus on physical sensuality; rather
it is the act of seeing, or of beholding physical beauty,
that enables the looker to perceive actual or true love,
a perfect happiness, an absolute love. The looker, like
Narcissus, loses and forgets himself as he beholds the
beauty before him; moreover, this experience also en-
ables him to create his own identity as a subject. This
act of creating the subject is epitomized in the poem
Mir ist geschehen als einem kindelîne (“It happened to
me like a child,” no. 145, 1), known as the “Narcissus
Song” (Narzissuslied) for its allusions to this myth. Here
the speaker/lover/subject overcomes his narcissism by
distinguishing himself from the object of his affections,
and by speaking about his desire in the language of the
text. Through the poem and through language, the act
of looking transcends a purely erotic level of refl ection,
approaching a more existential one. Thus, looking also
functions as a metaphor for the poetic process, for the
search for truth and its representation through language.
In this way, Morungen raises Minnesang from a purely
social purpose to an art form, thereby creating an aes-
thetic of service to women (Frauendienst).
Motifs that previously played a relatively minor
role in Minnesang, particularly those that show love as
enchantment or a magic force that pulls human beings
into its sphere, take on a central role. Classical in origin
(Ovid), such motifs closely connect Morungen’s lyric to
the concept of love portrayed in the early courtly epic
of the late twelfth century. In Veldeke’s Eneit and in
Gottfried’s Tristan, for example, courtly love (minne)
is a magical and sometimes deadly power. As the lyric
subject, Morungen experiences the same fate as the
epic heroes—submission through the magic of love
despite the threat of sickness, madness, or death. This
magic arises from the beauty of the beloved; she is the
moon, the stars, the sun, who sends down her light from
afar. In the poem known as the Venus-Lied, the lady is
a noble Venus (“ein Venus hêre,” no. 138, 33), whose
beauty shines like the sun from a window. This beauty
can inspire pure joy, and the word wunne (joy) appears
often in Morungen’s poems. (A notable example is In sô
hôher swebender wunne [“In joy fl oating so high,” no.
125, 19].) The beloved can also be a sweet murderess
in the poem Vil süeziu, senftiu tôterinne (“Very sweet,
soft murderess,” no. 147, 4), who inspires a love that
will last into the next world beyond death. The intimate
connection between love, death, and sorrow brings this
love very close to a mystical experience; there is an
obvious link to Gottfried here as well. But in the confl ict
it reveals between reality and dream or fantasy, the ex-
perience of the lover also harkens back to the metaphor
of Narcissus, whose fascination with his own projection
has deadly results.
Although Morungen cannot be said to have a school
of his own like that of Friedrch von Hausen, one can
fi nd thematic and stylistic evidence of his infl uence on
Walther von der Vogelweide. Interestingly, Morungen
himself is the hero of a ballad, “On the Honorable
Morunger” (Vom Edlen Möringer), that dates from the
middle of the fi fteenth century.
See also Friedrich von Hausen;
Gottfried von StraßburgFurther Reading
Bertau, Karl. Deutsche Literatur im europäischen Mittelalter, vol.
1: 800–1197. Munich: Beck, 1972, pp. 676–677.HEINRICH VON MORUNGEN