Werner Bergengruen (d. 1964) in Conversation with the Middle Ages: Significant Contributions to Twentieth-Century Medievalism

Albrecht Classen

doi:10.30560/hssr.v4n3p42

Abstract

Medievalism has experienced an enormous popularity in the last decades, if not century, but the specific contributions by the Baltic German author Werner Bergengruen have not yet received full attention. In light of a selection of his novellas, we can identify him as a meaningful respondent to medieval themes, ideas, concepts, and values which he dealt with rather creatively, employing them for his own ethical, religious, or spiritual musings. Studying Bergengruen’s novellas makes it possible not only to familiarize ourselves once again with one of the most popular German authors from the mid-twentieth century who has unfairly lost in popular appeal maybe since ca. 1970. Through his novellas we also gain intriguing keys to open innovative perspectives toward a variety of literary and didactic texts from the Middle Ages, which are not simply imitated here, but emerge as critical catalysts or sources for Bergengruen’s own reflections on timeless human issues.

Highlights

Medievalism has experienced an enormous popularity in the last decades, if not century, but the specific contributions by the Baltic German author Werner Bergengruen have not yet received full attention
How many people flippantly refer to the silly notion of the ‘flat earth,’ probably in response to the Monty Python movies, but overall reflecting a general modern conviction that people in the Middle Ages believed that the earth was flat (Wolf 2004)? We tend to chuckle when someone refers to the ‘chastity belt,’ unassumingly perpetuating a late medieval male joke about husbands’ inability to control their wives’ chastity, and there is a very good chance to discover such a belt in any of the countless ‘medieval’ museums all over the world, which come along with the horror-inducing torture instruments allegedly commonly applied by members of the ‘medieval’ Inquisition to force innocent victims to confess to all kinds of crimes (Classen 2007)
We would certainly need a detailed examination of “Kaiser Lucius’ Tochter” as a significant contribution to fifteenth-century German literature. (Note 10) We recognize here, to be sure, a significant concatenation of medieval and modern literary texts all focused on more or less the same motif. The analysis of these four novellas has demonstrated that Bergengruen offered creative, idiosyncratic approaches to the Middle Ages, utilizing a variety of themes and motifs that used to be popular in many different romances, treatises, and verse narratives

Summary

The Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century

We find ourselves already well in the twenty-first century, the fascination and almost obsession with the Middle Ages continue unabatedly, at least in public, popular culture. Rowland have experienced an enormous global popularity, and that any movie based somehow on the Middle Ages can be almost guaranteed an incredible box-office success (see, for instance, Harty 1999; Aberth 2003; Woods 2014; The Middle Ages in Popular Culture 2015; Spencer-Hall 2018) – especially if the moviemaker operates with King Arthur, the sword Excalibur, and Camelot as the iconic symbols of this universal, postRomantic intrigue about a past age This goes so far that many times we can hear clear resonances of the medieval world in public statements, images, concepts, speeches, and publications. Vol 4, No 3; 2021 medievalists and modern literary scholars have energetically pursued research into Medievalism, which might even be considered an entire scholarly subfield all by itself (for a great research survey, see Müller 2010; for political medievalism, see Elliott 2021)

Werner Bergengruen vis-à-vis the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages in the Balticum – Bergengruen’s Perceptions

Conclusion