Little is known about the life and personality of
Gottfried von Strassburg because there are no
records of his birth, activities, or death. All that remains
are brief references to him in his own works
and those of contemporary writers. It is not known
exactly when Gottfried was born, but from his
name it is to be assumed that he was active as a
writer primarily in the city of Strassburg. In terms
of a chronology, all that can be said is that he probably
composed his masterpiece, Tristan, between
1210 and 1215. Though apparently not a nobleman,
Gottfried nevertheless attained a high level of
education in such fields as theology, mythology,
and philosophy, and this education served as the
foundation for his literary work.
Apart from individual poems in various anthologies
of medieval German verse, Gottfried is
known essentially only for one work—his
Arthurian verse novel, Tristan. This book recounts
the courtly adventures of the protagonist, culminating
in his search for the HOLY GRAIL. At the center of
the novel is the story of TRISTAN AND ISEULT (called
Isolde in Gottfried’s novel), who flee from the court
of King Marke (Isolde’s lover and Tristan’s patron)
to live together in forbidden love. It is this passage of
the novel that has captured the imagination of
artists over the centuries and given rise to any number
of musical, literary, and artistic interpretations.
Left unfinished, presumably because of the author’s
early death, the general plots, as well as individual
episodes of Gottfried’s Tristan, are largely
based on CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES’s and WOLFRAM VON
ESCHENBACH’s Arthurian romances, as well as on
the Middle English verse narrative of the same
name. And yet Gottfried’s Tristan departs from
these sources to a great extent and is in many ways
revolutionary for MIDDLE AGES literature and
thought. For example, the lovers’ insistence on personal
happiness over the norms and expectations
of society, and their disavowing of the knightly
value system in the face of the intensity of their
love set Gottfried’s Tristan and Isolde apart from
similar works. The couple’s defiance of the aristocratic
codes has in turn been read as a kind of criticism
of courtly life and values in general This is an
example of the great subtlety of Gottfried’s writing,
for although Tristan is a work primarily for
and about the aristocracy, through the characters
and their tragic fate Gottfried calls this aristocratic
culture into question.
Other aspects of Gottfried’s Tristan were also
highly innovative and suggest an at-times surprisingly
modern orientation on the part of the writer.
The representation of love as the guiding life principle
of the protagonists, more important than social
norms and expectations, spoke against
medieval ideas of societal harmony and individual
submission. It would be this kind of vision of love,
however, that would dominate in the Renaissance
and modern eras, and in this sense Gottfried was
far ahead of his time.
Gottfried von Strassburg was praised during his
own time as a great artist and his Tristan, even in
its unfinished state, was considered a masterpiece
by audiences and peers. Later generations would
also recognize the beauty and accomplishment of
the work. In 1812 Jacob Grimm called Gottfried’s
Tristan “one of the most charming works of poetry
ever written.” More recently, the critic Rüdiger
Krohn has said of Gottfried, “No author of the
German Middle Ages was able to put into practice
the ideal of medieval poetics with the same mastery
(218).” It is Gottfried’s version of the Tristan
saga that has come to predominate in the European
imagination through the 20th century and
into the 21st, and in this way the mysterious author’s
legacy lives on through the present.
An English Version of a Work by
Gottfried von Strassburg
Tristan. Translated by A. T.Hatto.New York: Penguin,
1960.
A Work about Gottfried von Strassburg
Batts, Michael S. Gottfried von Strassburg. New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1971.