‘Ich, Michel Pehn’: Zum Kunst- und Rollenverständnis des meisterlichen Berufsdichters Michel Beheim by Friederike Niemeyer (review)

Abstract

1034 Reviews of the nine volumes of Jerome's collected works, only volumes v-ix are described. For the sake of completeness, especially as not all volumes of the Lexikon have appeared, a brief listing and description of volumes i-iv would have been useful, or at the very least an indication of where they will be described in furthervolumes of the Lexikon. However, such quibbles apart, Die deutscheLiteratur is to be welcomed and will prove invaluable when finally complete. University of Bristol Anne Simon 'Ich, Michel Pehn': Zum Kunst- und Rollenverstandnis des meisterlichenBerufsdichters Michel Beheim. By Friederike Niemeyer. (Mikrokosmos: Beitrage zur Literaturwissenschaft und Bedeutungsforschung, 59) Frankfurt a.M., Berlin, and Bern: Lang. 2001. 398 pp. ?33. ISBN 3-631-36945-x (pbk). Although generally regarded as a poet of modest ability, Michel Beheim (1420-after 1472) is nevertheless a fascinating figure in fifteenth-century German poetry, active in the transitional phase between courtly Sangspruchdichtung and urban Meistersang. His works (453 songs and three verse chronicles), surviving in autograph manuscripts or in manuscripts corrected by him, dating from the mid-1450s to the early 1470s, form an extensive corpus, but Friederike Niemeyer, in her Freiburg dissertation supervised by Walter Blank, is concerned with only a portion of it: the love-songs, the songs about the art of poetry, and the autobiographical songs. She thus leaves the songs on biblical-theologicaland moral-didactic themes aside, since they are generally not datable with precision and are in any case less relevant to her particular concern. The aim of the firstpart of the study is to show how Beheim's status and role were transformed fromthose ofa journey man weaver through service (probably as a soldier, with a peripheral role as poet) with a series of noblemen of increasingly illustrious rank to become a respected professionalpoet at the court ofthe Emperor himself. Niemeyer admits that a degree of speculation is inevitable, but there can be no doubt that her reconstruction of his career development (for all that she acknowledges her debt par? ticularly to the work of Frieder Schanze, especially his Meisterliche Liedkunst zwischen Heinrich von Miigeln und Hans Sachs (Munich: Artemis, 1983)), is well argued and plausible, based as it is on a close reading of Beheim's songs. Beheim's career (and there are few medieval poets about whom we have as much information) fails into three parts. The first{c. 1435-52) sees his rise from humble weaver to service with Konrad von Weinsberg and later Margrave Albrecht Achilles ofBrandenburg-Ansbach, which afforded him opportunities to develop and practise his art. By 1450, even though he doubtless still had other (probably military) duties, he was certainly achieving re? cognition as a singer, enjoying the patronage of various lords. In the second phase of his career (1462-65) we find him with Albrecht III of Bavaria (who provided him with ink and paper, a sign that his work was deemed worthy of record), Albrecht VI of Austria, Ladislaus of Hungary, and finally Emperor Frederick III, under whom he is described as 'des keisers dichter', seemingly a vernacular counterpart to the variouspoetae laureati, writing in Latin, that the Emperor created. In the third phase (1466 to his assassination between 1472 and 1479) Beheim served the Count Palatine Friedrich I as chronicler at Heidelberg and finally as Schultheifi at Siilzbach. The principal focus ofthe study,however, is on Beheim's conception of his art as it reveals itself through his self-presentation in his love-songs, his songs about poetry, and his 'autobiographical' songs. Though this approach leaves most ofthe rest of his oeuvre out of account, this does not matter because that material would add precious little to what the poems at the centre of the investigation can tell us. It soon becomes evident that Niemeyer has an impressive knowledge of the whole of Beheim's output MLRy 98.4, 2003 1035 and of German poetry of the high and later Middle Ages generally. She offerssome excellent analyses of particular songs (such as the allegories ofthe artistas falconer and as silver miner in songs 331 and 250) or groups of songs (such as Beheim's variations on the 'Wolfram-Rolle' in songs...