Hello, good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Hey.
How are you?
Oh, very well, very well, it's working.
Well, I'll introduce you and you can start now.
Oh, very good, likewise.
Albert Klassen, let's go with the closing presentation.
Albert Klassen is a distinguished professor at the University of Arizona, in the Department of German Studies.
His research ranges from medieval studies to 21st-century literature, counting among the most prolific translators internationally.
He has an intellectual output of more than 130 books and 800 articles.
He has explored an infinity of topics such as reception history, gender history, the history
of mentalities, literature, medieval globalism.
He is also the author of several poetry books and is editor-in-chief of prestigious journals
such as the Global Journal of Arts and Social Science, Medieval Humanities.
He is also the editor of the Renaissance and Baroque: German Literature series for Peter Lang.
Among his books, we highlight "Tracing the Trails in the Medieval Wall: Epistemological Explorations,
Orientation and Mapping in Medieval Literature" from Routledge.
Today he will talk about the Middle Ages in 19th-century ballads: History, Memory, Honour and Human Dignity.
Ah, that's great, thank you very much.
It's wonderful that we can connect via Teams, thank you very much.
I was very afraid that it wouldn't work, but now it is.
I am allowed to speak in English, thank you, but afterwards I can answer questions in Spanish.
So my topic in Spanish: The Middle Ages in 19th-century ballads and History, Memory, Honour and Human Dignity. Very good.
As a medievalist, I am very interested also in the rediscovery of the Middle Ages in the 19th century.
And we know already for a long time that the late 18th and 19th century discovered the great
importance of the Middle Ages for the New World.
It started in Germany and then spread to all other countries in Europe.
The major focus on the Middle Ages, for example, in Barcelona, that's the Barrio Gótico, as
an expression of this great interest in the Middle Ages.
In Germany, the Middle Ages mattered essentially for its own cultural and political identity
because the German Empire had collapsed under the onslaught of Napoleon in 1806, so people were
desperately trying to find a new world where they could identify themselves with.
And so the Middle Ages suddenly became a glorious past.
And so you have, on the one hand, many philologists, scholars like Frédéric Grimm, and on the
other you have countless new poets, romantic poets, for example, like Clemens
Brentano in "Achim von Arnim" and many others who discovered the value of medieval literature.
And they thought that through the reactivation of ballads, for example, they could recreate
the Middle Ages for their own self.
We observe, hence, the major significance of the medieval ballad as a new source of inspiration.
And this was a very explicit turn away from the classics.
You have, on the one hand, Sturm und Drang, Burger, for example, and then until 1788, 1790,
and even Young Goethe was one of them.
And then you have, during the 1790s, the strong emphasis on classics, so Goethe and Schiller
and then also Hölderlin and Kleist, they focus very much on classical literature.
And then come the romantics who, as I said, rediscovered the Middle Ages.
And we have a marvelous example to illuminate the fascinating concatenation from the Middle
Ages to the 19th century when we study the Hildebrand's lead and then the younger Hildebrand's lead.
Both are closely connected but separated by about 500 years.
And once the younger Hildebrand's lead, the jüngere Hildebrand's lead, had been transmitted
into song collections since the early 19th century, it regained new value.
So the most important anthology that initiated the rediscovery of medieval balladry and other
songs was "Das Knabenwunderhorn" from 1806 and 1808, edited by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano.
And they both basically drew from Heidelberg Leaderbuch, 16th-century Heidelberger Leaderbuch.
I do not mean the Codex Manesse, I mean the collection of heroic and balladic topics in that 16th-century Heidelberg songbook.
And that one was the main transitional stage between the Middle Ages and the Baroque.
Now, the jüngere Hildebrand's lead was also included there, and we'll come to that in a moment.
The 1808 edition became extremely popular all over Germany, and it played very much on the ideas
and values and also images of the Middle Ages.
So you see here a cover, and you have then clearly a reference to medieval musicians, the lady,
15th-century headgear, the man playing probably something like a lute, which was not medieval.
So it's kind of a mix, but it plays with medieval themes.
I have listed here on the left side a list or a number of names of 19th-century musical composers.
These are all some of the most important composers of their time, whether Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn,
Brahms, Mahler, and so forth, but then also some 20th-century composers such as Schönberg, Zeisel,
and Weber, who all, in a way, responded to these medieval ballads reactivated by the romantics.
So we have suddenly a very fascinating and multifaceted approach to the Middle Ages in the 19th
century, and we cannot understand the 19th century without that huge reorientation.
I'm showing you one drawing by Moritz von Schwind, which nicely captures this sense of the individual
kind of dreaming of the past being situated in the forest, dark forest or oak trees, but at
the same time peaceful and romantic setting.
Now, my most important example is really the Hildebrand's lead.
This is such a fascinating phenomenon because you have first the late early 9th-century Hildebrand's
lead, Canción de Hildebrand, and there are just two pages.
I show you the second page, which breaks off as a fragment.
It was very strange because two monks in the monastery of Fulda had copied that down about 820,
and it is a very pagan poem in which the father, Hildebrand, encounters his son, Hardebrand.
They don't know each other.
The father had been in the service of, excuse me, of the Huns, Attila or Etzel, and he was forced
to do so out of feudal obligations.
So he encounters his son, and the son is now a general, just like Hildebrand.
So Hardebrand is the young one, Hildebrand is the old one.
Hardebrand is in Germanic gear and weapons, Hildebrand in Hunnish.
And so we have immediately a major conflict, and the father recognises fairly quickly that this
is his son, but the son believes that his father has died already a long time ago, and that's sort of 30 years.
And since they both cannot agree, and there is a misunderstanding because the father tries to
reach out to his son with very valuable rings out of gold, and the son does not accept those.
So they both then get ready for the battle, and the poem basically breaks off right there when the slaughter begins.
We have only three options: either the son kills the father, the father kills the son, or both kill each other.
At any rate, highly tragic.
It's the only version we have; no one else ever referred to it.
And then there's a long hiatus or pause from about 820 to 1462 when suddenly the new Hildebrand's
lead was reconceived by a poet called Caspar von der Rhön.
And this is das Lied von dem alten Hildebrand.
We call that das jüngere Hildebrand's lead because here we have, again, the battle between these
two men, but the old man defeats the young one, but he doesn't kill him.
Then they both talk to each other, and they recognise each other as members of the same family.
And then they play a game as if the young man had defeated the old one.
The young one, Hardebrand, takes then the Hildebrand home.
His mother believes that he had triumphed over the other opponent, but the old man then drops
a ring into the wine cup, which then allows his wife to recognise that a husband has returned.
So the entire heroic, epic turns into a romantic, emotional song, and that became then the most
popular ballad throughout the centuries.
Of course, there is a hiatus from about 1555, the last time the song was recorded, then to 1806,
and that's the beginning of balladry in 19th-century German poetry.
So here is a summary: the Hildebrand's lead.
This is Caspar von Rhön, 1462.
Then always the conflict and a move then fast through the other aspects.
So the Sturm und Drang had already discovered the Volksballade, such as famously Lenore by Gottfried Burger, 1774.
But there are no medieval components, but it refers to the Seven Years' War in which Lenore's
lover died, and then he returns as a ghost and takes her with him to his cemetery, and then they both die.
So that's not yet the Middle Ages, which comes only with the early 19th century.
Young Goethe also follows Burger's model, but it's not so much medieval.
We'll see how this works, but he has here these three examples: the König von Thule, Erlkönig, and the Zauberlehrling.
All are set somehow in the past, but Goethe does not give us specifics of the Middle Ages.
The one exception is das Hochzeitslied, a very long ballad, which, however, is set in the time of the Crusades.
We don't learn much about it, only that the Crusading knight returns from the Holy Land and
finds that his castle is in bad shape.
Goethe relied on Brothers Grimm's Deutsche Sagen from 1816, and so yes, some medieval background.
But Goethe and Schiller, as I said, were very much focused on the classical period, whereas
Schiller, to some extent, at least, played with some medieval components, such as in the Taucher,
where you have a king and the knight.
Then you have the Handschuh, you have then the knight who has to go into the tournament ring
where his lady had thrown her glove.
So some historical background, then Ritter Toggenburg, so there are some elements.
So we have the Middle Ages still, or already a little bit present, but not fully yet.
That's really up to the romantics, as I said, and that's the beginning of the end, namely the
end of the Roman Empire, number one, 1806.
So Clemens Brentano, like many others of his time, was very much fascinated by the remnants
of the Middle Ages, such as Lorelei, which is a very famous sculpture.
Everyone knows that, and so are these castles along the Rhine.
So it's the rediscovery of the Rhine, actually, by the way, in touristic terms, primarily by
British travellers who discover the romantic aspects of all those castles.
Another poem is das Riesenspielzeug, referring to Borg Niedeck in the Alsace.
And this image is really very beautiful and casts a lot of light on the whole romantic notion here, the Ritter Toggenburg.
And you see here this in a sort of fanciful fashion, the knight sitting there and looking up
to this castle or maybe monastery rather.
So nature and the architecture, medieval architecture, Gothic building.
Ludwig Uhland, on the other hand, was the most important ballad author of his time, studied deeply the Middle Ages.
So we have, for example, Die Rache, we have Graf Eberstein, das Schloss Ameer, then Schwäbische Kunde.
That is important because there was the idealisation of the dynasty of the Hohenstaufen or Emperor Barbarossa.
These romantics in their ballads loved to return to the Middle Ages of the Staufen family because
it seemed to be an ideal world.
Then also Bertrand de Born, this is the name of a troubadour poet, so Provençal, early 12th century.
And so we have then countless other ballads broadly situated in the past.
I refer, for example, to Heinrich Heine with his Ritter Olaf.
I don't go into the details; I can always flesh that out later if you want, but there are conflicts
and tragedies pursuing pursuit of love, but also ethics and values of the knightly class.
Or Heine Schlachtfeld by Hastings, which is a historical reference to the battle between William
the Conqueror in 1066 against the English king, Harold, in which William the Conqueror then
won and which transformed all of medieval England.
Similarly, in the northern part of Germany, Annette von Traster-Hülshoff, or about the same
time, maybe about 1840, the Graf von Thal.
She also very much enjoyed the medieval references, such as the thought, this Erzbischofs Engelbert von Köln.
Then Eduard Mörike, the traurige Krönung.
Again, I would have to spend a lot of time going to the details of the content, but all I want
to say here is how much medieval concepts, themes, and motives influenced and stoffer, so materials,
influenced 19th-century poetry of balladry.
Then, of course, very much Gottfried Keller, der Nare des Grafen von Zimmern.
I know more about that because the Zimmern were a family in the Black Forest and left behind,
the Froben von Zimmern left behind a major chronicle of his family or the dynasty.
So Keller somehow learned about that.
There was a new edition of that chronicle, so he could draw from that.
Others were, of course, Theodor Fontane, and we're moving then quickly from the late Middle
Ages to the early modern age in this famous ballad of Archibald Douglas.
And this is very interesting because what these poets tried to do was to explore fundamental
concerns of honour, revenge, uh forgiveness, uh within a political sphere.
So Archibald Douglas, the Scottish uh nobleman whose family, not himself, his family, his brother,
had rioted against King James V, and he tried then in this ballad to demonstrate that he was
really always loyal and that his suffering is the collective guilt.
Um Whereas Archibald had really um tutored young child King James.
Now he is James's enemy, but he demonstrates in this ballad his unwavering loyalty to the king.
And so that finally King James recognises that, and we have a happy end, and he embraces Archibald Douglas once again.
Uh Then he has Gorm Grimme, a reference to a Danish king also dealing with questions such as uh regarding revenge.
Uh You have Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, König Etzel's Schwert.
Etzel is, of course, Attila, the Hunnish king.
So this universal interest in this um nomadic tribe of the Huns, and we're talking now about
the 5th century um when the Huns attacked the Roman Empire.
Or you have, you know, it goes back and forth, Meyer, der Tod und Frau Lara.
This deals really with the Renaissance, if you call this Renaissance, namely Petraka and his
beloved and geliebte Lara, so a more Lara, but also dealing with the Black Death uh in 1347 to 1351 or so.
So whatever really historical component was of relevance, they like to draw from that, like
Detlef von Lilienkron, a very popular uh Prussian poet, die Kapelle zum Finsteren Stern.
This takes place in 1250 and uh sheds light on this fascination by these romantics or post-romantics
in chapels and churches, cemeteries, castles, and so forth, um as I've shown you in some of the images before.
And Agnes Miegel, uh who was a major poet dealing within Nibelungen, and Nibelungen, of course,
the major German heroic epic from about 1200, and she revived this like many, many other writers of her time.
And the Nibelungen, of course, continue to be of great significance.
They were very important for the Nazis.
Um And then, uh in more recent years, there have been a number of movies.
I refer you also to Fritz Lang's famous 1924 movie, um and their artworks, and so forth and so forth.
Just the reference to the historical elements that mattered so deeply.
And also Das Meer from Ritter Manuel, that is a reference to Spanish.
Uh Well uh the, how should we say, Infante, yeah, that's the right word, Infante, so the prince.
And so these poets draw from all kinds of chronical accounts and present their audiences with these ballads.
So that we can conclude here already that basically all major German poets of their time were
deeply fascinated by the Middle Ages.
So the Middle Ages were not simply something from the distant past, but had in regained tremendous influence at that time.
And hence triggered the production of ballads everywhere.
I say here in Spanish, y también en la literatura española, francesa, italiana, o inglesa, but también portuguesa, etc.
People always and everywhere, also including in in Scandinavia turned to the Middle Ages and
dealt with this in a very interesting way.
They did not draw specific distinctions between German or Spanish history or between early Middle
Ages, high Middle Ages, late Middle Ages, or Renaissance and early modern times.
And this then leads to my conclusions.
The 19th century was deeply determined by the rediscovered medieval literature, history, and the arts.
I mean, let's take the arts.
You have a massive amount of artworks by the Raphaelites who very much delighted in recreating the Middle Ages.
The German poets very understandably demonstrated a strong interest in the historical material.
As I've said, and to remind you again because Germany had lost its empire in 1806, and the Second
Empire was reestablished only in 1871 surprisingly in Versailles after the Prussians had defeated the French.
And so they needed in that long hiatus between 1806 and 1871 simply a reference, an ideological
reference, and the Middle Ages proffered this as a substitute.
So the entire genre of ballads during the 19th century became very medieval.
Because the genre of the ballad proved to be a most convenient medium to reflect on global ethical concerns and social issues.
As I've said before, many of these poems deal with loyalty, revenge, hatred redemption idealism
service to the Lord and other related issues.
And since the time was ripe for this historical back reference the Middle Ages served this purpose really well.
You might ask me what happened actually in the background at that time or in the timeframe.
And we do have, of course, during the 19th century, the attempt to have a revolution, democratization,
you have the rise of the early industrialization since about 1850, and you have political repression
with the local princes everywhere trying to maintain their control.
So for many poets, turning back to the Middle Ages, where things looked all much more idealistic
and freer and more ethical so there was an ideal medium to to discuss these concepts.
The ballads were important complements to novels.
So, for example Adalbert Stifter in Austria writes these massive medievalizing novels like Wikido,
or then Hebbel, the major playwright. Let me actually correct. Stifter wrote Vitiko.
That's the name of his novel.
And Hebbel, in competition with Wagner, writes then his plays whereas Wagner writes his opera,
both focusing very much on the Nibelungen lead, once again.
And then you have, as I said oh, alluded to, you have many novels, so novellas, really, not
novels, that's Stifter, but novellas like Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, who plays very much on the medieval topics.
So the ballads simply complemented this vast new interest in the Middle Ages.
And most poets were deeply informed by the medieval themes, which also correlates with, A, the
the publication of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, by the establishment of professorships
at the various universities dedicated to the Middle Ages.
So students studying German, for example, German literature, were then increasingly exposed to medieval history.
So those poets who were interested in writing ballads had then a huge storehouse of material available.
And then as a summary, as a global overview, you have, on the one hand, medieval topics to some
extent already in Sturm und Drang, a little bit in vague terms during the classic, and then
again triumphant success during the Romanticism and then the entire 19th century.
And with that, I thank you very much.
Muchas gracias por su interés y atención, y, eh, sería muy, um, agradable, um, responder a cualquier, eh, preguntas. Muchas gracias.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Professor.
Well, let's move on then with this in-depth study of ballads.
Let's make way for some considerations, questions, comments.
Well, I wanted to ask you, I'm going to ask you from, from history. I'm a historian.
Ah, so for us in Spain, Germany is the place where history was born, with Leopold von Ranke.
It's Ranke, yes, and the Göttingen school and the whole German context.
And in that German context where history was born, you talk about a return to the Middle Ages
in the 19th century, which you've shown here.
However, eh, looking at the history of Ranke and other authors of that time, they don't focus
specifically on the Middle Ages, no, but rather on the Modern Age.
No, the Modern Age, you understand, right? The, I mean, yes.
So, in Germany, in the 19th century, there was a use of the Middle Ages, but there was also
a use of the Modern Age and the Ancient Age, wasn't there?
Um, thank you very much for your question.
Uh, it's fascinating to observe what happens, what happened in German history, because Ranke,
for example, was clearly, uh, the famous author who said, uh, "Geschichte, wie sie gewesen ist",
history as it was, which now, now we know that's not possible.
Uh, history is always the result of discourse, of business, negotiations, uh, debates, etc.
But, uh, historians have offered, uh, new information, uh, and have, uh, uh, perhaps, uh, reformed
the, the, the conception of the past in Germany.
And so, uh, they have offered information or data or materials or media as well, um, for the
poets who knew at that time that they could not express themselves in political forms, they
could not contribute to the situation in Spain, in Germany, um, in politics, in political terms.
Well, uh, it was like a refuge to the Middle Ages.
And in their ballads they could express or, uh, explore ideals, uh, ethics, uh, ideals or values
of ethics, of honour, of dignity, uh, of loyalty, disloyalty, um, those ideas.
And for that reason there was a, a, uh, meeting between literature, art, the, um, imagine, for
example, the new castles, Neuschwanstein, the reconstruction of medieval monuments.
It was a, a dream, perhaps one could say, a dream of the past, um, perhaps, um, because people
could not establish a democratic form.
Uh, it was very difficult.
Uh, uh, there was a lot of repression and for that reason a refuge to the Middle Ages.
And the ballads were, were very well received, um, for, uh, teaching, perhaps, uh, for music,
for the, um, general entertainment.
And so, um, I think, there was a, a, a new form of information, of, of, yes, of, of, of art and of media. No, media too, right?
The drawings, for example, or the, the paintings or sculptures.
There were many, uh, sculptures in Germany, uh, of German heroes like, uh, Herman, Hermanos.
Ah, uh, and always the, the idealisation of German or Germanic heroes, not German, but Germanic.
And for that reason, perhaps, uh, there was, there was such great interest in ballads.
Uh, thank you very much. Any more questions? Pablo.
Yes, I, well, I just wanted to ask you, Professor, uh, if this type of, of, of editions of ballads, right?
Are they something, uh, specific to Germany or are there equivalents in other parts of Europe?
Or is it, is it a phenomenon, this edition of this type of texts, is it something that is happening
in other places or at the same time or only in Germany? Yes, yes, thank you.
Ah, a very important question.
Um, uh, my focus has been on Germany, but at the same time we know that the same forms of reactivation
of the Middle Ages happened in, in Spain.
I have made a reference to the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona, to the reconstruction of the cathedral,
ah, just like in Cologne, in Germany, right?
Barcelona or Cologne, the same thing.
The cathedral was, uh, finished at the end, uh, or second part of the 19th century, ah, not in the Middle Ages.
Ah, well, uh, also in Scotland, for example, there was the famous collection of Ocean songs,
from Scotland, and the Germans, for example, reacted very intensively to those, uh, ballads from Scotland.
Um, I don't know enough, uh, about Italy or Spain or Portugal, but I think that at the same
time that, that fascination existed everywhere, because, uh, the, um, what do you call them?
The, the artists, uh, the Pre-Raphaelites, uh, in England, in France, have, uh, reanimated,
uh, the, the Middle Ages.
And in that way I think it was a, uh, a European or general fashion.
Uh, and also, for example, it's fascinating in the United, uh, United States too, ah, in a very curious way.
Um, for example, um, many churches in Spain or museums in Spain, in the 19th century or at the
beginning of the 20th century, did not have much interest in medieval art.
Uh, for that reason, uh, many, uh, Americans could buy, uh, objects of medieval art.
Um, and here in Tucson, here in Tucson, my university, in the art museum of my university, we
have for that reason, um, uh, art, an altarpiece from the city of Rodrigo, west of Salamanca,
which today is considered the most important art of the 15th century.
Um, it was possible to sell it or to buy it because, um, in the city of Rodrigo there was not much interest.
Um, only in the 20th century, perhaps again in, in Barcelona, ah, they began to collect art,
ah, popular, uh, well, uh, Catalan or from the Basque Country with the fascinating, ah, arts
of the century, ah, of, uh, 19th and 10th.
So there was also, slowly, a development, um, of that interest, ah, in the Middle Ages in Spain,
in other parts of, of Europe too.
Um, I don't know enough about the history of ballads in other languages, but I'm sure that,
ah, the Germans, ah, had a great influence in other parts of Europe, also, uh, in the United States, for example.
Ah, the, the ballads were, uh, translated and adapted by American poets, for example, and in
that, um, way also, probably, in Spain.
But I don't know enough about that.
A very important question, thank you. Thank you very much. Any more questions?
Well, just one more thing and then we'll go.
Uh, these, these ballads continued to be re-edited in the 20th century.
Ah, uh, what a question, how good.
In one way yes, in another way no.
Today, for example, almost not, totally not.
Ah, but during the Nazi era, ah, yes.
Ah, Agnes Miegel, for example, was one of the great poets, ah, who were supported by the Nazis.
Well, the Nazis used the Middle Ages very well, many times, intensively for their ideology, for their propaganda.
And for that reason, ballads were very, very popular, especially in schools.
And, but after the Nazis, after the end of World War II, ah, nothing, a total interruption.
And today I suppose that, well, the vast majority of young people know nothing about these ballads.
It's a story or it's a genre, ah, perhaps too ideological, in a too ideological way. And that's it.
Well, thank you very much.
Uh, with this we close the activity.
We thank you, uh, for your presence here, such an important academic.
We thank you for, uh, spending time with, with us and for allowing us to learn directly from
you, apart from your writings.
Uh, and we close the activity hoping, uh, uh, for new developments for next year's edition.
Thank you all very much.
Thanks to the technician, as Antonio said. Uh, and that's all.
Thank you very much and have a good day.
And more collaboration, I hope. Thank you, Professor.
Thank you very much, eh. See you later. Goodbye. See you later.