Zur rezeption mittelalterlicher lieddichtung in »Des Knaben Wunderhorn«: Mediävistische spurensuche in einem romantischen meisterwerk

The interest in medieval song poetry by Romantic poets has been well established, but Arnim's and Brentano's famous collection, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806), has not yet been closely studied as an anthology significant for its reception of medieval literature. This paper examines a wide selection of songs that Arnim and Brentano culled from sixteenth-, but also older songbooks, such as the five-volume set by Georg Forster (1539-1556). Some of the most important medieval poems included in Des Knaben Wunderhorn are dawn songs, historical ballads, such as the one of Tannhäuser, and the Jüngere Hildebrandslied, songs in the tradition of Neidhart, but also clearly antiSemitic songs. Another important testimony of the reception of medieval literature in the Wunderhorn is the ballad of Ritter Peter von Stauffenberg, which retells the story of a »Martenehe« and its potentially catastrophic consequences.