The Poet

In the absence of any mention of Hartmann von Aue in historical records, we are dependent upon what he himself tells us in his works, and what other poets tell us about him. Both confirm his name and provenance. Like the hero of his courtly legend, Der arme Heinrich, who is von Ouwe geborn (‘born of Aue’), Hartmann's home was in the duchy of Swabia, which corresponds today to the southern part of Baden-Württemberg, Vorarlberg, Eastern Switzerland and areas of the Alsace. This is attested by his occasional use of Alemannic dialect rhymes, and by a later author, Heinrich von dem Türlin, who in Diu Crône refers to Hartmann as a poet from ‘the Swabians’ land’. Middle High German (MHG) Ouwe means ‘meadow’, and place names ending in –au are common in South Germany and Switzerland, which renders greater precision difficult. There have, nevertheless, been attempts to identify Hartmann's birthplace. Manfred Scholz pleads for an Au near Freiburg im Breisgau, not least on the basis of the coats of arms assigned to Hartmann by the illustrators of the Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (the Manesse Codex) and the Weingartner Liederhandschrift. These manuscripts date from the early fourteenth century, however, perhaps a hundred years after Hartmann's death, and many of the arms in the miniatures are purely fanciful. The arms in the Hartmann miniatures have also been linked with the family of the dukes of Zähringen, and it has been suggested that one of them may have been Hartmann's patron, but again there is no concrete evidence. We do not know how high in rank Hartmann's patron was; if he were a duke it might have been expected that Hartmann would mention him by name. Poets of this time are, however, often reticent about patronage.

We glean most about his life from the prologues to his works. Here he specifically identifies himself as a ritter (‘knight’) and a dienstman, a servitor or ministerialis, serving the house of Aue.