Kristan von Hamle
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Kristan von Hamle (or Christan von Hamle) was a Middle High German poet from Thuringia who flourished in the mid-thirteenth century.[1] Nothing is known about his life or his family, as he has not been identified in any documentary record.[2]
Six "pleasing",[3] yet unoriginal songs of the Minnesang (courtly love) tradition are attributed to him.[1] His main influences were Heinrich von Morungen, Walther von der Vogelweide and Gottfried von Neifen.[1] All of his work is preserved in the Codex Manesse.[2] There he is depicted in a barrel being winched up into a castle by a lady.[2][4] The image is based on the legend of Virgil in the basket, although it may be that, unlike Virgil, Kristan actually reaches the lady's room.[5]
The German philologist Jacob Grimm had, according to his own account from 1850, his first encounter with medieval German literature when in 1803 he picked up a copy of Johann Jakob Bodmer's Minnelieder in Karl von Savigny's library and opened it to the "poems in a curoius, barely comprehensible German" of Kristan von Hamle and Jakob von Wart.[6]
Works
- Der meie kumt mit schalle[2]
- Ich bin der, der lieben liebu̍ mere singet, a dawn song,[2] in which the watchman asks God's blessing on the adulterous couple[7]
- Ich wolte, daz der anger sprechen solte[2]
- Mit froͤlichem libe, mit armen umbevangen[2]
- Wol mich des sliessens, des si slos[2]
- Wunneclichen sol man schowen[2]