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Hello, good afternoon.

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Good afternoon.

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Hey.

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How are you?

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Oh, very well, very well, it's working.

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Well, I'll introduce you and you can start now.

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Oh, very good, likewise.

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Albert Klassen, let's go with the closing presentation.

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Albert Klassen is a distinguished professor at the University of Arizona, in the Department of German Studies.

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His research ranges from medieval studies to 21st-century literature, counting among the most prolific translators internationally.

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He has an intellectual output of more than 130 books and 800 articles.

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He has explored an infinity of topics such as reception history, gender history, the history

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of mentalities, literature, medieval globalism.

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He is also the author of several poetry books and is editor-in-chief of prestigious journals

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such as the Global Journal of Arts and Social Science, Medieval Humanities.

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He is also the editor of the Renaissance and Baroque: German Literature series for Peter Lang.

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Among his books, we highlight "Tracing the Trails in the Medieval Wall: Epistemological Explorations,

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Orientation and Mapping in Medieval Literature" from Routledge.

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Today he will talk about the Middle Ages in 19th-century ballads: History, Memory, Honour and Human Dignity.

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Ah, that's great, thank you very much.

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It's wonderful that we can connect via Teams, thank you very much.

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I was very afraid that it wouldn't work, but now it is.

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I am allowed to speak in English, thank you, but afterwards I can answer questions in Spanish.

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So my topic in Spanish: The Middle Ages in 19th-century ballads and History, Memory, Honour and Human Dignity. Very good.

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As a medievalist, I am very interested also in the rediscovery of the Middle Ages in the 19th century.

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And we know already for a long time that the late 18th and 19th century discovered the great

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importance of the Middle Ages for the New World.

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It started in Germany and then spread to all other countries in Europe.

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The major focus on the Middle Ages, for example, in Barcelona, that's the Barrio Gótico, as

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an expression of this great interest in the Middle Ages.

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In Germany, the Middle Ages mattered essentially for its own cultural and political identity

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because the German Empire had collapsed under the onslaught of Napoleon in 1806, so people were

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desperately trying to find a new world where they could identify themselves with.

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And so the Middle Ages suddenly became a glorious past.

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And so you have, on the one hand, many philologists, scholars like Frédéric Grimm, and on the

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other you have countless new poets, romantic poets, for example, like Clemens

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Brentano in "Achim von Arnim" and many others who discovered the value of medieval literature.

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And they thought that through the reactivation of ballads, for example, they could recreate

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the Middle Ages for their own self.

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We observe, hence, the major significance of the medieval ballad as a new source of inspiration.

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And this was a very explicit turn away from the classics.

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You have, on the one hand, Sturm und Drang, Burger, for example, and then until 1788, 1790,

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and even Young Goethe was one of them.

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And then you have, during the 1790s, the strong emphasis on classics, so Goethe and Schiller

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and then also Hölderlin and Kleist, they focus very much on classical literature.

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And then come the romantics who, as I said, rediscovered the Middle Ages.

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And we have a marvelous example to illuminate the fascinating concatenation from the Middle

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Ages to the 19th century when we study the Hildebrand's lead and then the younger Hildebrand's lead.

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Both are closely connected but separated by about 500 years.

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And once the younger Hildebrand's lead, the jüngere Hildebrand's lead, had been transmitted

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into song collections since the early 19th century, it regained new value.

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So the most important anthology that initiated the rediscovery of medieval balladry and other

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songs was "Das Knabenwunderhorn" from 1806 and 1808, edited by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano.

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And they both basically drew from Heidelberg Leaderbuch, 16th-century Heidelberger Leaderbuch.

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I do not mean the Codex Manesse, I mean the collection of heroic and balladic topics in that 16th-century Heidelberg songbook.

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And that one was the main transitional stage between the Middle Ages and the Baroque.

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Now, the jüngere Hildebrand's lead was also included there, and we'll come to that in a moment.

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The 1808 edition became extremely popular all over Germany, and it played very much on the ideas

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and values and also images of the Middle Ages.

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So you see here a cover, and you have then clearly a reference to medieval musicians, the lady,

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15th-century headgear, the man playing probably something like a lute, which was not medieval.

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So it's kind of a mix, but it plays with medieval themes.

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I have listed here on the left side a list or a number of names of 19th-century musical composers.

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These are all some of the most important composers of their time, whether Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn,

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Brahms, Mahler, and so forth, but then also some 20th-century composers such as Schönberg, Zeisel,

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and Weber, who all, in a way, responded to these medieval ballads reactivated by the romantics.

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So we have suddenly a very fascinating and multifaceted approach to the Middle Ages in the 19th

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century, and we cannot understand the 19th century without that huge reorientation.

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I'm showing you one drawing by Moritz von Schwind, which nicely captures this sense of the individual

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kind of dreaming of the past being situated in the forest, dark forest or oak trees, but at

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the same time peaceful and romantic setting.

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Now, my most important example is really the Hildebrand's lead.

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This is such a fascinating phenomenon because you have first the late early 9th-century Hildebrand's

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lead, Canción de Hildebrand, and there are just two pages.

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I show you the second page, which breaks off as a fragment.

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It was very strange because two monks in the monastery of Fulda had copied that down about 820,

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and it is a very pagan poem in which the father, Hildebrand, encounters his son, Hardebrand.

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They don't know each other.

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The father had been in the service of, excuse me, of the Huns, Attila or Etzel, and he was forced

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to do so out of feudal obligations.

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So he encounters his son, and the son is now a general, just like Hildebrand.

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So Hardebrand is the young one, Hildebrand is the old one.

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Hardebrand is in Germanic gear and weapons, Hildebrand in Hunnish.

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And so we have immediately a major conflict, and the father recognises fairly quickly that this

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is his son, but the son believes that his father has died already a long time ago, and that's sort of 30 years.

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And since they both cannot agree, and there is a misunderstanding because the father tries to

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reach out to his son with very valuable rings out of gold, and the son does not accept those.

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So they both then get ready for the battle, and the poem basically breaks off right there when the slaughter begins.

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We have only three options: either the son kills the father, the father kills the son, or both kill each other.

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At any rate, highly tragic.

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It's the only version we have; no one else ever referred to it.

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And then there's a long hiatus or pause from about 820 to 1462 when suddenly the new Hildebrand's

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lead was reconceived by a poet called Caspar von der Rhön.

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And this is das Lied von dem alten Hildebrand.

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We call that das jüngere Hildebrand's lead because here we have, again, the battle between these

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two men, but the old man defeats the young one, but he doesn't kill him.

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Then they both talk to each other, and they recognise each other as members of the same family.

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And then they play a game as if the young man had defeated the old one.

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The young one, Hardebrand, takes then the Hildebrand home.

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His mother believes that he had triumphed over the other opponent, but the old man then drops

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a ring into the wine cup, which then allows his wife to recognise that a husband has returned.

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So the entire heroic, epic turns into a romantic, emotional song, and that became then the most

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popular ballad throughout the centuries.

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Of course, there is a hiatus from about 1555, the last time the song was recorded, then to 1806,

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and that's the beginning of balladry in 19th-century German poetry.

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So here is a summary: the Hildebrand's lead.

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This is Caspar von Rhön, 1462.

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Then always the conflict and a move then fast through the other aspects.

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So the Sturm und Drang had already discovered the Volksballade, such as famously Lenore by Gottfried Burger, 1774.

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But there are no medieval components, but it refers to the Seven Years' War in which Lenore's

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lover died, and then he returns as a ghost and takes her with him to his cemetery, and then they both die.

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So that's not yet the Middle Ages, which comes only with the early 19th century.

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Young Goethe also follows Burger's model, but it's not so much medieval.

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We'll see how this works, but he has here these three examples: the König von Thule, Erlkönig, and the Zauberlehrling.

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All are set somehow in the past, but Goethe does not give us specifics of the Middle Ages.

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The one exception is das Hochzeitslied, a very long ballad, which, however, is set in the time of the Crusades.

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We don't learn much about it, only that the Crusading knight returns from the Holy Land and

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finds that his castle is in bad shape.

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Goethe relied on Brothers Grimm's Deutsche Sagen from 1816, and so yes, some medieval background.

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But Goethe and Schiller, as I said, were very much focused on the classical period, whereas

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Schiller, to some extent, at least, played with some medieval components, such as in the Taucher,

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where you have a king and the knight.

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Then you have the Handschuh, you have then the knight who has to go into the tournament ring

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where his lady had thrown her glove.

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So some historical background, then Ritter Toggenburg, so there are some elements.

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So we have the Middle Ages still, or already a little bit present, but not fully yet.

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That's really up to the romantics, as I said, and that's the beginning of the end, namely the

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end of the Roman Empire, number one, 1806.

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So Clemens Brentano, like many others of his time, was very much fascinated by the remnants

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of the Middle Ages, such as Lorelei, which is a very famous sculpture.

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Everyone knows that, and so are these castles along the Rhine.

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So it's the rediscovery of the Rhine, actually, by the way, in touristic terms, primarily by

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British travellers who discover the romantic aspects of all those castles.

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Another poem is das Riesenspielzeug, referring to Borg Niedeck in the Alsace.

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And this image is really very beautiful and casts a lot of light on the whole romantic notion here, the Ritter Toggenburg.

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And you see here this in a sort of fanciful fashion, the knight sitting there and looking up

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to this castle or maybe monastery rather.

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So nature and the architecture, medieval architecture, Gothic building.

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Ludwig Uhland, on the other hand, was the most important ballad author of his time, studied deeply the Middle Ages.

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So we have, for example, Die Rache, we have Graf Eberstein, das Schloss Ameer, then Schwäbische Kunde.

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That is important because there was the idealisation of the dynasty of the Hohenstaufen or Emperor Barbarossa.

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These romantics in their ballads loved to return to the Middle Ages of the Staufen family because

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it seemed to be an ideal world.

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Then also Bertrand de Born, this is the name of a troubadour poet, so Provençal, early 12th century.

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And so we have then countless other ballads broadly situated in the past.

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I refer, for example, to Heinrich Heine with his Ritter Olaf.

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I don't go into the details; I can always flesh that out later if you want, but there are conflicts

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and tragedies pursuing pursuit of love, but also ethics and values of the knightly class.

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Or Heine Schlachtfeld by Hastings, which is a historical reference to the battle between William

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the Conqueror in 1066 against the English king, Harold, in which William the Conqueror then

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won and which transformed all of medieval England.

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Similarly, in the northern part of Germany, Annette von Traster-Hülshoff, or about the same

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time, maybe about 1840, the Graf von Thal.

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She also very much enjoyed the medieval references, such as the thought, this Erzbischofs Engelbert von Köln.

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Then Eduard Mörike, the traurige Krönung.

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Again, I would have to spend a lot of time going to the details of the content, but all I want

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to say here is how much medieval concepts, themes, and motives influenced and stoffer, so materials,

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influenced 19th-century poetry of balladry.

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Then, of course, very much Gottfried Keller, der Nare des Grafen von Zimmern.

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I know more about that because the Zimmern were a family in the Black Forest and left behind,

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the Froben von Zimmern left behind a major chronicle of his family or the dynasty.

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So Keller somehow learned about that.

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There was a new edition of that chronicle, so he could draw from that.

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Others were, of course, Theodor Fontane, and we're moving then quickly from the late Middle

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Ages to the early modern age in this famous ballad of Archibald Douglas.

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And this is very interesting because what these poets tried to do was to explore fundamental

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concerns of honour, revenge, uh forgiveness, uh within a political sphere.

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So Archibald Douglas, the Scottish uh nobleman whose family, not himself, his family, his brother,

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had rioted against King James V, and he tried then in this ballad to demonstrate that he was

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really always loyal and that his suffering is the collective guilt.

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Um Whereas Archibald had really um tutored young child King James.

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Now he is James's enemy, but he demonstrates in this ballad his unwavering loyalty to the king.

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And so that finally King James recognises that, and we have a happy end, and he embraces Archibald Douglas once again.

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Uh Then he has Gorm Grimme, a reference to a Danish king also dealing with questions such as uh regarding revenge.

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Uh You have Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, König Etzel's Schwert.

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Etzel is, of course, Attila, the Hunnish king.

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So this universal interest in this um nomadic tribe of the Huns, and we're talking now about

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the 5th century um when the Huns attacked the Roman Empire.

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Or you have, you know, it goes back and forth, Meyer, der Tod und Frau Lara.

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This deals really with the Renaissance, if you call this Renaissance, namely Petraka and his

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beloved and geliebte Lara, so a more Lara, but also dealing with the Black Death uh in 1347 to 1351 or so.

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So whatever really historical component was of relevance, they like to draw from that, like

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Detlef von Lilienkron, a very popular uh Prussian poet, die Kapelle zum Finsteren Stern.

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This takes place in 1250 and uh sheds light on this fascination by these romantics or post-romantics

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in chapels and churches, cemeteries, castles, and so forth, um as I've shown you in some of the images before.

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And Agnes Miegel, uh who was a major poet dealing within Nibelungen, and Nibelungen, of course,

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the major German heroic epic from about 1200, and she revived this like many, many other writers of her time.

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And the Nibelungen, of course, continue to be of great significance.

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They were very important for the Nazis.

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Um And then, uh in more recent years, there have been a number of movies.

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I refer you also to Fritz Lang's famous 1924 movie, um and their artworks, and so forth and so forth.

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Just the reference to the historical elements that mattered so deeply.

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And also Das Meer from Ritter Manuel, that is a reference to Spanish.

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Uh Well uh the, how should we say, Infante, yeah, that's the right word, Infante, so the prince.

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And so these poets draw from all kinds of chronical accounts and present their audiences with these ballads.

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So that we can conclude here already that basically all major German poets of their time were

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deeply fascinated by the Middle Ages.

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So the Middle Ages were not simply something from the distant past, but had in regained tremendous influence at that time.

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And hence triggered the production of ballads everywhere.

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I say here in Spanish, y también en la literatura española, francesa, italiana, o inglesa, but también portuguesa, etc.

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People always and everywhere, also including in in Scandinavia turned to the Middle Ages and

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dealt with this in a very interesting way.

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They did not draw specific distinctions between German or Spanish history or between early Middle

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Ages, high Middle Ages, late Middle Ages, or Renaissance and early modern times.

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And this then leads to my conclusions.

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The 19th century was deeply determined by the rediscovered medieval literature, history, and the arts.

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I mean, let's take the arts.

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You have a massive amount of artworks by the Raphaelites who very much delighted in recreating the Middle Ages.

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The German poets very understandably demonstrated a strong interest in the historical material.

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As I've said, and to remind you again because Germany had lost its empire in 1806, and the Second

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Empire was reestablished only in 1871 surprisingly in Versailles after the Prussians had defeated the French.

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And so they needed in that long hiatus between 1806 and 1871 simply a reference, an ideological

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reference, and the Middle Ages proffered this as a substitute.

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So the entire genre of ballads during the 19th century became very medieval.

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Because the genre of the ballad proved to be a most convenient medium to reflect on global ethical concerns and social issues.

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As I've said before, many of these poems deal with loyalty, revenge, hatred redemption idealism

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service to the Lord and other related issues.

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And since the time was ripe for this historical back reference the Middle Ages served this purpose really well.

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You might ask me what happened actually in the background at that time or in the timeframe.

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And we do have, of course, during the 19th century, the attempt to have a revolution, democratization,

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you have the rise of the early industrialization since about 1850, and you have political repression

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with the local princes everywhere trying to maintain their control.

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So for many poets, turning back to the Middle Ages, where things looked all much more idealistic

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and freer and more ethical so there was an ideal medium to to discuss these concepts.

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The ballads were important complements to novels.

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So, for example Adalbert Stifter in Austria writes these massive medievalizing novels like Wikido,

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or then Hebbel, the major playwright. Let me actually correct. Stifter wrote Vitiko.

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That's the name of his novel.

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And Hebbel, in competition with Wagner, writes then his plays whereas Wagner writes his opera,

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both focusing very much on the Nibelungen lead, once again.

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And then you have, as I said oh, alluded to, you have many novels, so novellas, really, not

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novels, that's Stifter, but novellas like Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, who plays very much on the medieval topics.

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So the ballads simply complemented this vast new interest in the Middle Ages.

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And most poets were deeply informed by the medieval themes, which also correlates with, A, the

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the publication of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, by the establishment of professorships

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at the various universities dedicated to the Middle Ages.

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So students studying German, for example, German literature, were then increasingly exposed to medieval history.

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So those poets who were interested in writing ballads had then a huge storehouse of material available.

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And then as a summary, as a global overview, you have, on the one hand, medieval topics to some

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extent already in Sturm und Drang, a little bit in vague terms during the classic, and then

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again triumphant success during the Romanticism and then the entire 19th century.

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And with that, I thank you very much.

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Muchas gracias por su interés y atención, y, eh, sería muy, um, agradable, um, responder a cualquier, eh, preguntas. Muchas gracias.

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Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Professor.

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Well, let's move on then with this in-depth study of ballads.

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Let's make way for some considerations, questions, comments.

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Well, I wanted to ask you, I'm going to ask you from, from history. I'm a historian.

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Ah, so for us in Spain, Germany is the place where history was born, with Leopold von Ranke.

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It's Ranke, yes, and the Göttingen school and the whole German context.

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And in that German context where history was born, you talk about a return to the Middle Ages

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in the 19th century, which you've shown here.

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However, eh, looking at the history of Ranke and other authors of that time, they don't focus

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specifically on the Middle Ages, no, but rather on the Modern Age.

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No, the Modern Age, you understand, right? The, I mean, yes.

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So, in Germany, in the 19th century, there was a use of the Middle Ages, but there was also

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a use of the Modern Age and the Ancient Age, wasn't there?

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Um, thank you very much for your question.

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Uh, it's fascinating to observe what happens, what happened in German history, because Ranke,

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for example, was clearly, uh, the famous author who said, uh, "Geschichte, wie sie gewesen ist",

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history as it was, which now, now we know that's not possible.

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Uh, history is always the result of discourse, of business, negotiations, uh, debates, etc.

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But, uh, historians have offered, uh, new information, uh, and have, uh, uh, perhaps, uh, reformed

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the, the, the conception of the past in Germany.

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And so, uh, they have offered information or data or materials or media as well, um, for the

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poets who knew at that time that they could not express themselves in political forms, they

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could not contribute to the situation in Spain, in Germany, um, in politics, in political terms.

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Well, uh, it was like a refuge to the Middle Ages.

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And in their ballads they could express or, uh, explore ideals, uh, ethics, uh, ideals or values

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of ethics, of honour, of dignity, uh, of loyalty, disloyalty, um, those ideas.

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And for that reason there was a, a, uh, meeting between literature, art, the, um, imagine, for

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example, the new castles, Neuschwanstein, the reconstruction of medieval monuments.

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It was a, a dream, perhaps one could say, a dream of the past, um, perhaps, um, because people

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could not establish a democratic form.

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Uh, it was very difficult.

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Uh, uh, there was a lot of repression and for that reason a refuge to the Middle Ages.

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And the ballads were, were very well received, um, for, uh, teaching, perhaps, uh, for music,

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for the, um, general entertainment.

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And so, um, I think, there was a, a, a new form of information, of, of, yes, of, of, of art and of media. No, media too, right?

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The drawings, for example, or the, the paintings or sculptures.

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There were many, uh, sculptures in Germany, uh, of German heroes like, uh, Herman, Hermanos.

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Ah, uh, and always the, the idealisation of German or Germanic heroes, not German, but Germanic.

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And for that reason, perhaps, uh, there was, there was such great interest in ballads.

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Uh, thank you very much. Any more questions? Pablo.

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Yes, I, well, I just wanted to ask you, Professor, uh, if this type of, of, of editions of ballads, right?

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Are they something, uh, specific to Germany or are there equivalents in other parts of Europe?

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Or is it, is it a phenomenon, this edition of this type of texts, is it something that is happening

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in other places or at the same time or only in Germany? Yes, yes, thank you.

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Ah, a very important question.

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Um, uh, my focus has been on Germany, but at the same time we know that the same forms of reactivation

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of the Middle Ages happened in, in Spain.

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I have made a reference to the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona, to the reconstruction of the cathedral,

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ah, just like in Cologne, in Germany, right?

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Barcelona or Cologne, the same thing.

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The cathedral was, uh, finished at the end, uh, or second part of the 19th century, ah, not in the Middle Ages.

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Ah, well, uh, also in Scotland, for example, there was the famous collection of Ocean songs,

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from Scotland, and the Germans, for example, reacted very intensively to those, uh, ballads from Scotland.

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Um, I don't know enough, uh, about Italy or Spain or Portugal, but I think that at the same

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time that, that fascination existed everywhere, because, uh, the, um, what do you call them?

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The, the artists, uh, the Pre-Raphaelites, uh, in England, in France, have, uh, reanimated,

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uh, the, the Middle Ages.

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And in that way I think it was a, uh, a European or general fashion.

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Uh, and also, for example, it's fascinating in the United, uh, United States too, ah, in a very curious way.

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Um, for example, um, many churches in Spain or museums in Spain, in the 19th century or at the

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beginning of the 20th century, did not have much interest in medieval art.

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Uh, for that reason, uh, many, uh, Americans could buy, uh, objects of medieval art.

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Um, and here in Tucson, here in Tucson, my university, in the art museum of my university, we

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have for that reason, um, uh, art, an altarpiece from the city of Rodrigo, west of Salamanca,

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which today is considered the most important art of the 15th century.

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Um, it was possible to sell it or to buy it because, um, in the city of Rodrigo there was not much interest.

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Um, only in the 20th century, perhaps again in, in Barcelona, ah, they began to collect art,

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ah, popular, uh, well, uh, Catalan or from the Basque Country with the fascinating, ah, arts

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of the century, ah, of, uh, 19th and 10th.

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So there was also, slowly, a development, um, of that interest, ah, in the Middle Ages in Spain,

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in other parts of, of Europe too.

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Um, I don't know enough about the history of ballads in other languages, but I'm sure that,

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ah, the Germans, ah, had a great influence in other parts of Europe, also, uh, in the United States, for example.

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Ah, the, the ballads were, uh, translated and adapted by American poets, for example, and in

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that, um, way also, probably, in Spain.

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But I don't know enough about that.

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A very important question, thank you. Thank you very much. Any more questions?

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Well, just one more thing and then we'll go.

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Uh, these, these ballads continued to be re-edited in the 20th century.

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Ah, uh, what a question, how good.

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In one way yes, in another way no.

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Today, for example, almost not, totally not.

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Ah, but during the Nazi era, ah, yes.

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Ah, Agnes Miegel, for example, was one of the great poets, ah, who were supported by the Nazis.

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Well, the Nazis used the Middle Ages very well, many times, intensively for their ideology, for their propaganda.

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And for that reason, ballads were very, very popular, especially in schools.

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And, but after the Nazis, after the end of World War II, ah, nothing, a total interruption.

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And today I suppose that, well, the vast majority of young people know nothing about these ballads.

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It's a story or it's a genre, ah, perhaps too ideological, in a too ideological way. And that's it.

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Well, thank you very much.

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Uh, with this we close the activity.

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We thank you, uh, for your presence here, such an important academic.

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We thank you for, uh, spending time with, with us and for allowing us to learn directly from

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you, apart from your writings.

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Uh, and we close the activity hoping, uh, uh, for new developments for next year's edition.

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Thank you all very much.

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Thanks to the technician, as Antonio said. Uh, and that's all.

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Thank you very much and have a good day.

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And more collaboration, I hope. Thank you, Professor.

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Thank you very much, eh. See you later. Goodbye. See you later.