Süßkind von Trimberg

Süßkind von Trimberg or Susskind of Trimberg (c. 1230 – c. 1300) was a German minnesinger, and, in all probability, the first documented Jewish poet of the German language. He is called a Jew three times in the manuscript (which was completed around 1330) and is painted with a Judenhut (the hat Jews were forced to wear by law in the latter Middle Ages). Besides that, the name “Süßkind” was then exclusive to Jews, and the orthography and language of his poems correspond to the area he is supposed to have come from. His poems are generally assumed to have been written between 1250 and 1300.

Biography

Süßkind is named after his probable birthplace Trimberg, a town with a castle of the same name, now a part of the Elfershausen, in Bad Kissingen district, Franconia, near Würzburg. All that is really known about him are his six poems (about 200 lines) in the "Codex Manesse" (now at Heidelberg), and the accompanying picture, which show that he took high rank among the poets of his time. Everything else - assumptions that he might have been a physician, might have lived at the court of the bishop of Würzburg or Frankfurt - are pure speculation from later times, usually based on the interpretation of his picture in the codex, which shows him before a bishop or a bishop's representative with a bishop's staff, but without his mitre, seated on a throne, under a flag which is variously said to be the flag of the town of Constance (whose bishop was closely associated with the codex), of Fulda (near Frankfurt/Main) or of the archbishop of Cologne. There is a tradition that his burial was mentioned in an old (now disappeared) memory book of the Jewish community of Schlüchtern near Fulda.

Although most of the traveling minstrels - the class to which he seems to have belonged or tried to belong to - were unmarried, he sang of the worth of the virtuous wife (III,2), and of the hunger and misery of his children (V,1). There are possible allusions to Hebrew prayers and benedictions in his texts, as in I,3, where his comparison of the briefness of man's days and his salvation through God correspond to the 33rd benediction said on the eve of the Jewish New Year. He stated that nobility – and this at the high time of chivalry, in a collection where every singer of remotely noble descent is portrayed with a coat of arms – is not dependent on birth, but on one’s deeds: “Nobility is not dependent on a piece of paper / Who acts nobly, him will I account noble.”

In one of the last poems in the "Codex" (V,2) he bitterly complains that he fooled himself with his attempts to be an artist ("Ich var ûf der tôren vart /mit mîner künste zwâre"), that he is now determined to let his grey beard grow long and henceforth go his way humbly as a Jew, wrapped in a long coat, his hat pulled deep in his face, and won't sing any chivalrous ("hovelîchen") song, since the noblemen ("herren") won't grant him any further support.

Fable of the Wolf

The most characteristic of his poems is the "Fable of the Wolf":

:

Evidently this fable refers to the author's own circumstances or at least to those of his coreligionists.

Bodmer (1759) and Von der Hagen (1838) reprinted the poems from Manesse's collection.

Literature

*Dietrich Gerhardt: "Süsskind von Trimberg. Berichtigungen zu einer Erinnerung". Lang, Bern u.a. 1997, ISBN 3-906757-01-3
*Friedrich Torberg: "Süsskind von Trimberg. Roman". Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-10-079002-2 (imaginary biography)

Bibliographies of Jewish Encyclopedia

:JewishEncyclopedia
*"Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie", xxxvii.334-336;
*Grätz, "Gesch". 3d ed., vi.233 et seq.;
*Kurz, "Gesch. der Deutschen Literatur", 8th ed., i.76;
* "Allg. Zeit. des Jud.," 1896, p. 395.

External links

* [http://dispatch.opac.ddb.de/DB=4.1/REL?PPN=118757725 Online-Gesamtkatalog Der Deutschen Bibliothek]
* [http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/piece.pl?pid=313 Art of the States: The Resounding Lyre] Musical setting of "Wâhebûf und Nichtenvint"
* http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/13Jh/Suezkint/sue_intr.html

ee also

* "Süßkind"