Französische Heldenepik im deutschen Sprachraum: Die Rezeption der Chansons de Geste im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert—Überblick und Fall-studien (review)

It has been a common understanding for a long time that medieval French literature exerted a tremendous influence on Middle High German literature, with Chrétien de Troyes having provided probably the most inspiration for his German colleagues, such as Hartmann von Aue. To what extent, however, was the German heroic epic also influenced by French epic? This is the question pursued by Thordis Hennings in her Heidelberg Habilitation (2005), here presented in its printed version. Bernd Bastert's Cologne Habilitation from 2002 (apparently not yet in print) had focused on a very similar topic, which forced Hennings, once she had realized it, to redirect her own approach considerably, though it is not quite clear in what way. She only indicates that Bastert basically assumed that the transmission took place primarily via written sources, whereas Hennings would also like to include the possibility of oral reception. This is all very curious and not truly productive since no absolute statement in this regard can ever be made, especially considering the lack of completely concrete evidence either in favor of written or oral sources. The author offers some critical comments on the global debate as an introduction to his thesis, but she subsequently drops the difficult and controversial issue almost entirely and argues along very different lines. Bastert seems to have extended his investigation of heroic epics and related texts up to ca. 1500, whereas Hennings limits herself to the situation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, without truly finding her own stance in this whole debate.

In essence, this book at first introduces a wide range of Old French texts pertaining to the genre of the chansons de geste, and then German adaptations, which receive the greatest attention in the second part. Hennings demonstrates a very solid understanding of and familiarity with Old French and knows really well how to summarize the content of the individual texts. For each epic she offers information about date, origin, manuscript tradition, edition/s, translations, etc. With the help of the table of contents one can easily find the individual epics dealt with, but I would have definitely preferred a solid index for the entire book. Hennings then introduces the Middle High German texts, focusing especially on those dealing with Charlemagne (Rolandslied, The Stricker's Karl der Große, Karl Meinet, etc.), and those concentrating on the heroic figure Willehalm (Wolfram von Eschenbach). To a large extent this all would fall under the category of literary history in a very traditional sense, although the author certainly makes efforts to point out the common elements with the French sources, if any can be determined. She also examines related texts where a French influence is clearly observable, such as Wolfram's Parzival, Konrad von Würzburg's Schwanenritter, and Ortnit. Whether the Nibelungenlied really fits into this context, seems highly questionable.

Only with the second part of this study do we come across more critical investigations, but at first Hennings offers a reproduction of the Kitzingen fragment of the Strit van Alescans, accompanying it with the original Old French text, thus illustrating very clearly where the differences lie, which might allow us to determine the proximity of this fragment to the original Old French text. The other major text in Hennings's study is Ulrich von Türheim's Rennewart, which she divides into four major thematic blocks and discusses each of them at great length. Since not even many scholars are familiar with this epic, the author summarizes this text at considerable length, thereby considerably swelling up her book a bit too extensively (which parallels her approach in the first part). But her paraphrases of the French sources will be of great help for Germanists with no solid command of Old French. At the margins she adds brief references to the specific passages in Ulrich's...