Introduction: Lohengrin and History

THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER described how Lohengrin arrived in the historical and geographical space of medieval Europe. That space provides the context not only for his meeting with and marriage to Elsam but also for his subsequent involvement in events for which direct real-world antecedents can be identified. Between the defining stages in the story of the Swan Knight—his marriage to and departure from his wife—Lohengrin joins Henry I in two battles, first against the Huns, then in Italy against the Saracens “von Affricân” (from Africa; 351.3505). The account of these conflicts occupies several hundred strophes and raises questions about coherence and cohesion that resemble those we have already encountered—for instance, in the integration of chronicle material at the end of Lohengrin or the relationship between Lohengrin's roles of Christian hero and courtly lover. In this case, the difficulties observed by previous criticism have often focused on the intrusion of a new field of material into the narrative: the ill-fated love story in which Lohengrin acts as Elsam's savior is combined with, and in terms of textual length displaced by, an account of imperial history in which he takes up arms against the religious “other” in the manner of a crusading hero. The result has been described, to quote one representative account, as a “merkwürdige und keineswegs bruchlos gelungene Zusammenbindung von Schwanritterstoff und Reichsgeschichte” (curious and by no means unbrokenly successful combination of the Swan Knight material with the history of the empire).

Such impressions may well have been conditioned by the imbalance between the two sets of events in the expectations of a modern audience, most obviously in the wake of the Wagnerian version. Wagner compresses the action into two days in a single location (Antwerp), focusing on the short-lived presence of Lohengrin as Elsa's savior there. The figure of the Swan Knight has thus become inextricably linked to the tale of the forbidden question rather than to the story of religious warfare that is practically unknown outside specialist circles. Previous attempts to come to terms with the combination of the two in Lohengrin have concentrated on thematic parallels in how Lohengrin participates in the two sets of events.