Gottfried von Strassburg

“ Strassburg he found a society whose ways of living and thinking were equally different from those of Frankfort and of Leipzig. Strassburg had not the bounded intellectual horizon which made him feel himself an alien in his native town, nor, on the other hand, did it offer the opportunities for frivolous distraction which he found in the "little Paris." Strassburg had been a French town for a hundred years, but there was no town in Germany more intensely German in its sympathies and aspirations. ”

“ In all probability he did not belong to the nobility, as he is entitled Meister, never Herr, by his contemporaries; his poem—the only work that can with any certainty be attributed to him bears witness to a learned education. ”

“ The crux of the situation is Strassburg, for as long as it is not German, it will prevent South Germany from giving herself unreservedly to German unity and to a national German policy. As long as Strassburg is a sally-port for an ever ready army of from 100,000 to 150,000 men, Germany will find herself unable to appear on the upper Rhine with an equally large army on time—the French will always be here first. ”

“ Probably there never was a better version of the story of Tristan and Iseult than that of Gottfried of Strassburg, who transformed French originals into his Middle High German poem about the year 1210. [713] The poet-adapter sets forth his ideas of love in an elaborate prologue. Very antithetically he shows its bitter sweet, its dear sorrow, its yearning need; indeed to love is to yearn—an idea not strange to Plato—and Gottfried uses the words sene, senelîch, senedaere (all of which are related to sehnsucht, which is yearning) to signify love, a lover, and his pain. ”

“ The city of Berne followed this example, and the magistrates of Strassburg took the same course, when some of the Beguines adopted the former alternative and{404} some the latter. Many of these took refuge secretly at Mainz. They were discovered, and the archbishop, John II., holding them to be heretics, ordered them to be prosecuted. The matter was intrusted to Master Henry von Stein, who set vigorously about it. The refugees from Strassburg, mostly women, were thrown into prison ”

“ You may count on my vote in the Bundestag until war is at hand. Then conditions will be altered. I am as ready as the next man to fulfil my obligations. But take care lest you judge people differently from what they are. Give us Strassburg, and we shall be with you at all hazards. As long as Strassburg is a sally-port for an ever armed force, I must fear that my country will be inundated by foreign troops before the North German Alliance can come to my assistance. ”

“ The first part of 'Faust' is itself the work of more periods than one. The original conception may belong to Goethe's student days at Strassburg. He had grown weary of the four Faculties,—alas, even of theology; he had known a maiden as fair and sweet and simple as Gretchen, and he had left her widowed of her first love; and there in Strassburg was the presence of that old Cathedral, which inspired so terrible a scene in the 'Faust.' From Strassburg he returned to Frankfort, and no moments of his career of authorship were more fruitful than these which preceded the first Weimar years. ”

“ He therefore holds fast to all that can recall to him the good old time, and foster in him the hope that a better epoch will return. Very many inhabitants of Strasburg formed little circles, separate, indeed, but nevertheless united in spirit, which were always increased and recruited by the numerous subjects of German princes who held considerable lands under French sovereignty, since fathers and sons, either for the sake of study or business, resided for a longer or shorter time at Strasburg. ”

“ In 1887 he became governor of Strassburg, in 1888 general of infantry and in 1889 minister of war. He retired from the active list in 1890. In 1894 the university of Konigsberg made him a Dr. Phil, honoris causa. ”

“ The feud which raged round the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper had already broken out before the first diet of Spires, and had aroused great and immediate excitement. At a very early period, however, efforts were made to allay the dissension. Strassburg pronounced for conciliation: but the most powerful and zealous champion of peace was to be found in the landgrave Philip of Hesse, who recognized the absolute necessity—from a political standpoint—of the union of all German Protestants. It is probable that he had invited Luther to a religious conference as early as the year 1527 ”

“ Strasburg alone was a cause of any anxiety, because the Germans were eager to obtain possession of a fortress the fall of which would give them undisputed command of the Rhine, and become of great value in the event of unlooked-for and improbable reverses. General von Werder, with the Baden Division, after the battle of Woerth, had been sent to invest the town, and he arrived before it on the 11th. It is not intended to relate in these pages the siege of Strasburg, which properly belongs to the story of the Franco-German war as a whole. ”

“ The bishopric of Strassburg existed in the days of the Merovingian kings, being probably founded in the 4th century, and embraced a large territory on both banks of the Rhine, which was afterwards diminished by the creation of the bishoprics of Spires and Basel. The bishopric was in the archdiocese of Mainz and the bishop was a prince of the empire. The episcopal lands were annexed by France in 1789 and the subsequent Roman Catholic bishops of Strassburg discharged spiritual duties only. ”

“ As regards the musical institutions and periodical concerts of Strassburg, suffice it to state that the local government [Pg 18] has always encouraged the cultivation of music; it is, therefore, not surprising, considering the love for music evinced by the Alsatians, that Strassburg has been during the last three centuries one of the chief nurseries of this art on the Continent. Until the year 1681, when Strassburg was ceded to France, it possessed an institution called Collegium Musicum, which enjoyed the special patronage of the local government. ”

“ He returned to Strassburg in 1524, being anxious to spread the doctrines of the Reformation among the French-speaking population of the neighbourhood. By the Germans he was distrusted, and in 1526 his activities were prohibited by the city of Strassburg. He was, however, befriended by Jacob Sturm, who recommended him to the Landgraf Philip of Hesse, the most liberal of the German reforming princes. ”

“ Strassburg was one of the first among the German towns in which the Meistersänger flourished. An old sculpture of a Meistersänger, life-size, placed under the celebrated organ of the cathedral, testifies to the popular esteem enjoyed by this corporation. The town library possessed two curious oil-paintings on panel, dating from about the year 1600, which belonged to the Meistersänger of Strassburg, who used to place them one at each side of the entrance to their hall of assembly. ”

“ Nevertheless Pleyel, after having been set free, thought it advisable to leave Strassburg for London as soon as possible.
Besides those already mentioned, several other distinguished musicians could be named who were born or who lived in Strassburg. Ottomarus Luscinius, a priest, whose proper German name was Nachtigall, published in the year 1536, in Strassburg, his 'Musurgia, seu Praxis Musicæ,' a work much coveted by musical antiquarians. Sebastian Brossard, who, about the year 1700, was Kapellmeister at the Strassburg Cathedral, is the author of a well-known musical dictionary. ”

“ The minnesingers and their immediate predecessors and successors, on the other hand, furnished thought for a great part of our modern art. To put it in a broad manner, it may be said that much of our modern poetry owes more than is generally conceded to the German mediæval romance as represented in the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strasburg, and the unknown compilers of the “Nibelungenlied” and “Gutrune.” Music owes more to the troubadours, for, from what we know of the melodies of the minnesingers, they cannot compare in expressiveness with those of their French confrères. ”

“ The rural population embraces 51% of the whole, the urban population 48%. The largest towns are Strassburg (the capital of the territory) , Mülhausen, Metz, Colmar, all above 20,000 inhabitants each. Classified according to religion there were, in 1904, 372,078 Protestants, 1,310,391 Roman Catholics, and 32,379 Jews. Education is provided for at the university of Strassburg, in 21 classical and pro-classical schools, in 18 modern schools, and in nearly 4000 elementary schools. Over 85% of the people speak German as their mother-tongue, the rest French, or a patois of French. ”

“ It was in a world where such opinions were entertained by men of the highest character and intelligence that Goethe made his irresponsible addresses to the successive objects of his passion.
The distractions of Strassburg, no more than the distractions of Leipzig, diverted Goethe from what were his ruling instincts from the beginning—to know life and to be master of himself. As in Leipzig, his professional studies in Strassburg held little place in his thoughts ”

“ The scenery between the two places is grand. The broad mountains of the Black Forest rear their fronts on the east, and the blue lines of the French Vosges meet the clouds on the west. The night before, in walking over the plain, I saw distinctly the whole of the Strassburg minster, whose spire is the highest in Europe, being four hundred and ninety feet, or but twenty-five feet lower than the Pyramid of Cheops. ”

“ Philip of Hesse, however, had none of the theological narrowness which characterised Luther and Melanchthon, and, in a less degree, even Zwingli; he was not so blind as the divines to the political necessities of the situation, and he managed to avert a breach for the time; it was due to him that Strassburg and Ulm, Nürnberg and Memmingen, and other towns added their weight to the protest against the decree of the Diet. Jacob Sturm of Strassburg and Tetzel of Nürnberg were, indeed, the most zealous champions of the Recess of 1526 during the debates of the Diet ”

“ It is as if the whole eight were sitting in friendly council for the good of Paris. How beautiful they are, with their grand expressionless faces, and their graceful attitudes, and their simple antique drapery. They are all sitting in their mural crowns,—the fortified cities on cannons, the commercial ones on bales of goods. Strasburg alone seems full of life. She has her arm akimbo, as if braving Germany, to which she once belonged. Look, north from the Obelisk, up the Rue de la Concorde, and the splendid church of the Madeleine bounds your sight. ”

“ Strauss was in the counsels of the king, Frederick William IV, and at important moments exercised an influence on his political decisions. Yet that somewhat eccentric prince could not resist his inclination to make cheap jokes at Strauss's expense. After creating him court-chaplain, he said to Alexander von Humboldt: "A trick in natural history which you cannot copy! I have turned an ostrich (Strauss) into a bullfinch (Dompfaffer) "—in allusion to Strauss's being a preacher at the cathedral (Dom) . ”

“ Hartmann von Aue, though rather attached to than a member of the noble family of the same name from which he has taken the hero of Der Arme Heinrich, seems to have been admitted to knightly society, was a crusader, and appears to have been of somewhat higher rank than Gottfried, whom, however, he resembled in this point, that both were evidently men of considerable education. We rise again in status, though probably not in wealth, and certainly not in education, when we come to Wolfram von Eschenbach. ”

“ After forty years, no music stirs them like the Marseillaise." It is said that the little Alsatian schoolboys, when on a trip to the frontier, decorate their hats and buttonholes with the French colors. No one can be long in Strassburg without realizing the futility of Germany's campaign against French influence. It is true that there is a certain veneer of German civilization; the policemen wear the same uniform as the Berlin police; German names appear over the principal shops; but in the stores and cafés one hears the middle-class Alsatians speaking French ”

“ My original design was to aid not only the inhabitants of Strassburg, but those in other portions of Alsace who are equally destitute. I thought that to be just to all and produce the best moral influence, the employment, and the payment, should be given to Strassburg, thus making of the inhabitants workers, instead of beggars, but that the warm garments made by them should be sent to the half-naked peasants of the villages, and little country homes where the harvest has been lost, and neither money nor clothing comes within reach. ”

“ They then assured me that it was not everybody's concern to look for significance in pictures; that to themselves, at least, nothing of the sort would have occurred; while the whole population of Strasburg and the vicinity, which was to throng thither, would no more take such crotchets into their heads than the queen herself and her court. ”

“ After studying at Cologne and Paris, he returned to Strassburg, where, as a Dominican, he was allowed to officiate as a priest, although the town was involved in the great interdict of 1324. In 1339, however, he had to fly to Basel, which was the headquarters of the revivalist society who called themselves "the Friends of God." About 1346 he returned to Strassburg, and was devoted in his ministrations during the "black death" in 1348. ”