(ca. 1140-ca. 1210) poet
No official records have been found that give the exact birth and death dates of Heinrich von Veldeke, but it is known that he was a member of a family of minor nobility in Limburg, then a German province in what is now part of Belgium. He is best known for his medieval adaptation of virgil’s Aeneid, but he also wrote a narrative about the life and miracles of the fourth-century saint Bishop Servatius of Ton-geren, as well as a series of love songs.
Heinrich began the Eneit around 1174 but did not finish it until 1190, during which time, as he relates in his epilogues, the manuscript was stolen. He supposedly loaned it to Margareta, the countess of Cleve and his patron. When she was married to Ludwig III of Thuringia, it was “stolen” by Count Heinrich (Ludwig’s brother), who sent it home to Thuringia. Heinrich did not get the manuscript back until he journeyed to Thuringia nine years later. Count Palatine Hermann (another brother) finally returned it to him and asked that he finish the story. Thus the poet gained the patronage of the two counts.
Heinrich’s Eneit, alternately called the Eneas, is based heavily on an anonymous French translation of the Aeneid called Roman d’Eneas (Book of Aeneas, ca. 1160). Heinrich had also read Virgil’s epic in Latin, and the Eneit maintains Virgil’s original narrative; Heinrich changed only those elements necessary in keeping with the Christian world of medieval chivalry, adapting the epic to fit court fashions and customs of the 12th century and to emphasize activities, such as jousting, of the noble classes.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the two works involves details of the gods. In the Eneit,
Heinrich includes the pagan gods of Rome but gives them a much smaller role. As a whole, the characters in his adaptation have more responsibility over their choices, and the story is about both the struggle for self-fulfillment and the role of fate in our lives.
Love also plays a much more prominent role in Heinrich’s version than it does in Virgil’s. For example, Virgil uses the scene with Dido to explain the politics of Carthage and Rome, but Heinrich uses it to theorize on the meaning of love and obsession. As a result, the scene in the Eneit becomes much larger and more important to the poet’s message. In addition, the relationship between Aeneas and Lavinia is established in a very minor scene in Virgil’s Aeneid, but it carries more weight in terms of its relevance to the theme in the Eneit, revealing what love can be like when it is reciprocated. Heinrich’s attention to the idea of love is a direct result of his having read ovid’s works and his being aware of his audience—medieval nobles for whom courtly love was a way of life.
In terms of artistic achievement, the Eneit is no match for the Aeneid; however, it is important in that it was one of the first successful books to be written in vernacular German rather than in traditional Latin. This accomplishment made Heinrich one of the founders of German court epic poetry, and his influence on later German writers was profound. In the introduction to his translation of the Eneit, J. W. Thomas quotes the Middle High German poet gottfried von strassburg, who comments on Veldeke’s influence:
[I]t was he who made the first graft on the tree of German verse and that the shoot put forth the branches and the blossoms from which they took the art of fine composition. This craft has now spread so widely and become so varied that all who devise tales and songs can break off an ample supply of the twigs and blooms of words and music.
English Versions of a Work by Heinrich von Veldeke
Fisher, Rodney W. Heinrich von Veldeke: Eneas: A Comparison with the “Roman d’Eneas” and a Translation into English. Bern: Peter Lang, 1992. Heinrich von Veldeke: Eneit. Translated by J. W. Thomas. New York: Garland Publishing, 1985.
