[This article comprises
two papers given at the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts
in 2003. David B Dickens is Professor of German at Washington & Lee
University, while Elizabeth Miller is the author of five books on Dracula.]
A. Beheim and the Tradition of German Meistergesang
(David
B Dickens)
While
the name of Michel Beheim (1416-1472) is unfamiliar to most, the subject
of one of his longer poems, a contemporary account of the atrocities committed
by the historical Dracula, is widely known (and will be dealt with by
Elizabeth Miller in the second part of this article). This section examines the
poet himself as well as the age and the literary culture within which he
worked, in particular the tradition known as
Meistergesang (also Meistersang).
Beheim[1]
was Germany’s most productive poet of the fifteenth century. In German literary
history he occupies a controversial position between the courts of the late
Middle Ages and the newer urban society that fostered Meistergesang. He
was long considered an epigone, an extensive borrower, and even a hack, but
more positive assessments of his work have been appearing in the past thirty
years. Born in 1416 in the small town of Sülzbach near Weinsberg in
southwestern Germany, he followed his father’s trade of a weaver until about
1439, when his local feudal lord, the Imperial Archchamberlain Konrad von
Weinsberg brought him to his court, perhaps as a soldier. It may be fortuitous coincidence that Konrad,
earlier close to Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund (r.1411-1433), was a member of
Nürnberg’s prestigious “Order of the Dragon,” which had inducted Vlad Dracula’s father in 1431,
the same year Vlad was born. Konrad was something of a humanist, a poet of some
accomplishment, and a patron who also
encouraged Beheim’s own development as a poet.
When Konrad died in
1448, Beheim offered his services to Margrave Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg
and served in his Heidelberg court from
1448 to 1454. He was court poet, to be
sure, but also an emissary of sorts who traveled widely; thus, in 1450 he went
to Norway and Denmark to attend the coronation of Danish King Christian IV as
King of Norway. Beheim carried messages from Margrave Albrecht to the latter’s
niece, now Queen of Denmark.
Beheim had many such
aristocratic patrons and benefactors and knew many courts,[2]
but perhaps the most significant period of his life was from 1459-1466, the
time spent at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich III (1440-93) in
Vienna. He accompanied the Emperor on the “Bulgarian Crusade” against the Turks
in 1460 and witnessed the popular uprising of the Viennese people against
Friedrich and the siege of the Hofburg in 1461-62. He wrote about this in his Book
of the Viennese (Das Buch von den Wienern), a 13,000-line chronicle in
“ponderous” rhymed verse (McDonald, Song-Poetry 245-55) composed during
the years 1462-66. In 1462-63 Beheim was a frequent visitor to the Abbey of
Melk on the Danube, where he met the Franciscan monk Brother Jacob, a refugee who
had fled Dracula’s cruelties. Beheim’s poem about Dracula was probably
completed in late 1463 and presented at court during the winter of that year. A
falling-out with the Emperor led to his dismissal in 1466 (when Beheim
entertained at the Imperial Diet in Nürnberg) or 1467; he returned to
Heidelberg, this time to the court of Friedrich I, Count Palatine of
Wittelsbach (1425-76).
.jpg "Russian caricature (illustration Yale University Library)")
