[In the following excerpt, Walshe explains how Walther naturalized and humanized courtly literature and analyzes his shifting political allegiances.]

The great blazer of new trails was Walther von der Vogelweide. We do not know with any certainty where Walther was born.

The statement, still sometimes repeated, that he came from the Layener Ried in the valley of the Eisack in what is now Italian South Tyrol is supported by no other evidence than the existence there of a Vogelweidhof, and is not inherently particularly probable. We know from his own statement that he learnt his art in Austria, which at that time almost certainly means Vienna, and by definition certainly excludes Tyrol.

He probably came from Lower Austria, and was of knightly birth, though it seems he never actually became a knight. At any rate he was thoroughly at home in courtly society, and seems to have made his way to the Ducal court in Vienna about 1190. In a late poem he speaks of having sung of love for forty years, and his last datable poem can be placed in 1227 or 1228. He probably died about 1230, aged round about sixty.

At the Viennese court, Walther's especial patron seems to have been Duke Frederick I (1194-98). After Frederick's death in Palestine his successor, Leopold VI (‘der Glorreiche’), withdrew his favour from Walther, who had to leave Vienna. In this fateful year of 1198 he set out on a series of prolonged wanderings which only properly ended perhaps about 1220. We can follow Walther's progress round Germany fairly well for most of this time. The civil war in the Empire had just broken out, and his first stop was at the court of King Philip. In 1201 we find him in Thuringia as a guest at the Landgrave's court, and in 1203 he went on a visit to Vienna in the entourage of Wolfger von Ellenbrechtskirchen, Bishop of Passau (after 1204 Patriarch of Aquileia). It is from this period that the only documentary evidence for Walther's life is found: it is recorded in the episcopal accounts that the Bishop gave him a sum of money, in November 1203, to buy himself a fur coat. Later on we find him at the court of Dietrich of Meissen, where he met Heinrich von Morungen, and at one time he was at that of the Emperor Otto IV. Finally, about 1220, Frederick II gave him the fief he had so long begged for in vain—apparently a small estate in or near Würzburg, where he is traditionally supposed to be buried.

Walther differs from all other poets of his time above all by the range of his poetic achievement: he wrote not only poems of Minne but also religious, gnomic, political and didactic poems. In his beginnings at Vienna he is still bound by the fetters of the courtly convention; his earliest poems are full of reminiscences of Dietmar, Veldeke, Morungen and especially Hartmann von Aue. Yet even here, after a very few attempts and while he still subscribes to conventional forms, his native freshness and originality of treatment begin to make themselves apparent. It is not long before he begins to feel out and criticise the weaknesses of Reinmar's poetry and—unpardonable sin!—even to parody them. Like Johannsdorf and Reinmar he makes vivid use of dialogue, and he does not shrink from praising his lady's physical charms as well as her virtues.

Unlike Reinmar and some others, Walther is not fond of sentimental complaints and yearnings. His love is generally jubilant, rather in this respect resembling Morungen, from whom he learnt much, as we can see from the dactylic poem:

Wol mich der stunde daz ich si erkande,
diu mir den lîp und den muot hât betwungen,
sit deich die sinne sô gar an si wande,
der si mich hât mit ir güete verdrungen.
Daz ich gescheiden von ir niht enkan,
daz hât ir schœne und ir güete gemachet
und ir rôter munt, der sô lieplîchen lachet.

Happy the hour in which I first knew her, who has enslaved both my body and my mind, since I have turned my senses to her so fully that her goodness has deprived me of them. That I cannot part from her is due to her goodness and her beauty, and her red lips that laugh so sweetly.

With Morungen, too, he shares that joy in nature which remains such a constant feature throughout his writings. With poems such as the one quoted, Walther drew courtly love down to earth from the rarefied heights to which Reinmar had elevated it. But soon he was to go further than this and break through the convention altogether, making a simple maiden the central figure in a group of songs. Here, if anywhere, we can speak perhaps of genuine confessional poetry. In this new figure Walther discovers and recognises the true nobility of womanhood, setting her up as his ideal in conscious opposition to the court ladies who are, as he says, too proud for him. But even here the confessional element is social rather than personal in the full modern sense. The romantic figure of the artist in opposition to society is only foreshadowed, not fully worked out. But where Hartmann had once jestingly turned to ‘poor women’, it was left to Walther to exploit the possibilities of such an attitude, and this is his greatest innovation in the sphere of courtly love-poetry.

Yet Walther's love-poetry always remains ‘courtly’: he greatly widened the bounds of the permissible within that sphere, but he never deserted it altogether. Walther's poems of this new type are sometimes classed as poems of niedere Minne in contrast to the hohe Minne of the full courtly convention. The term as so used is misleading: in one poem (46,32) Walther seeks the advice of Lady Measure on how to avoid the extremes of ‘high’ and ‘low’, and on this basis we may adopt the term ebene Minne (‘love on an equal footing’), which expresses the relation more exactly. For Walther, in sharp and conscious contrast to others of whom he is highly critical, has no intention of descending into the depths, either morally or artistically. The difference is only social, and it is bridged by raising his partner to the level of his ideals, not by degrading himself. Nor was he fond of the self-abasement that convention demanded, and his sort of love-poetry did not call for this, though he treats his low-born maiden like a queen, declaring that he prefers her glass ring to a queen's golden one. The gem of these poems is the charming pastourelle Under der linden. If this breathless retrospective account, put in the mouth of a village girl, of a tumble in the grass approaches in its theme perilously near the edge of niedere Minne, it is saved by its delicate grace and its glorious rhythm and—a delightful touch—by the girl's pride that her lover had addressed her as ‘noble lady’: a malicious dig at the court ladies!

Having made his point and dealt the established convention a staggering blow, Walther then calmly returned to his starting-point and sang once again the praise of noble ladies. But in so doing he did not sacrifice the gains of his excursion into a new field—just as he had raised the simple maiden to the status of a queen, so now he pulled the noble lady down off her pedestal and revealed her humanity in which, for him, her true nobility consisted:

(46,10 [Page and line references are to K. Lachmann's first edition of Walther's poetry, 1827.])

Swâ ein edeliu frouwe schœne reine,
                              wol gekleidet unde wol gebunden,
                              dur kurzewîle zuo vil liuten gât,
                              hovelîchen hôchgemuot, niht eine,
                              umbe sehende ein wênic under stunden,
                              alsam der sunne gegen den sternen stât,—
                              Der meie bringe uns al sîn wunder,
                              waz ist dâ sô wünneclîches under
                              als ir vil minneclîcher lîp?
                              wir lâzen alle bluomen stân
                              und kapfen an daz werde wîp,
                              Wherever a noble lady fair and pure,
                              well attired and fairly wimpled,
                              goes for her enjoyment into company,
                              with proud and courtly bearing, not alone,
                              glancing around a little between whiles,
                              just as the sun eclipses the stars—
                              let May bring us all his wonders:
                              what is so glorious among them all
                              as her lovely body?
                              we leave all the flowers alone
                              and admire the noble woman.

Between Walther and Reinmar there is the greatest possible contrast. Reinmar would never have attempted such vivid scenes. But Walther does not only humanise the courtly world—he naturalises it and its conception of love. Love is for him the joy of two hearts: it must be shared equally. His lady must be a friend as well. We have already seen that one feature of the theory of courtly love was its educative value, but this was exclusively directed towards the man: the lady, being by hypothesis perfect, was in no need of education. Walther does not hesitate to flout this polite fiction and give his lady advice on how to behave. There are good people and bad among both sexes, and Walther sees it as part of his task to educate society to live up to the courtly ideals its members profess. He wrote a number of poems of a purely didactic nature, but the same tone is by no means absent from his general lyric production. This may well have contributed to his unpopularity. He was no respecter of persons, and was clearly incapable, for long, of keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself.

The great change in Walther's life came in 1198, when he was forced to take to the road. Here he came into contact with wandering scholars and minstrels of all sorts, and the result was an inevitable broadening of his outlook. It did not, however, make him abandon his courtly ideals or lose his class-consciousness. To the end he remained consciously der werden ein—an aristocrat by birth as well as temper. As such he usually—though not quite always—managed to receive his due wherever he sought hospitality. But he kept his eyes and ears open and was not above learning from humbler brethren of the road. Compelled to earn his keep, he developed a new and original line: he became a poetic propagandist. He was able to link up here with an old tradition, but just as he had nearly burst the bonds of courtly love-poetry, so here he transformed his new discovery—the so-called Spruchdichtung or gnomic poetry—into something altogether fresh and startlingly effective.

The term Spruchdichtung is misleading if it suggests spoken verse as opposed to song: in 12th- and 13th-century Germany it too was sung. Gnomic poetry as such was a fairly unsophisticated and unpretentious genre, though of great antiquity. It may be defined as the poetic treatment, in succinct and memorable form, of proverbial lore, religious ideas and general experience. It was a genre much favoured in early Scandinavia (the Hávamál or ‘Words of the High One’, attributed to Odin), and probably also in early times in Germany. The earliest traces we find of such poetry in Germany are the stanzas contained in the collective manuscripts of the Minnesänger, mainly under the name of Spervogel (sometimes ‘der junge Spervogel’). But these are clearly not all the work of one man: at least two such writers can be distinguished, the elder of whom, though sometimes now referred to as Spervogel Anonymus, in fact called himself Hergêr. He was a wandering poet who made his way from one court to another, and may be dated about 1170. His poetry is largely personal: he bewails the hard lot of the elderly man forced to wander because he has no home of his own, and praises the lords who give him temporary hospitality and presents. He is fond of clothing general ideas in the form of short single-stanza beast-fables, such as that of the wolf who becomes a monk and eats the sheep entrusted to him, or he sings of heaven and hell and praises God's omnipotence in terms of simple piety. The second writer, who probably flourished in the 1190's, is actually anonymous, though he refers to Spervogel as his companion. He is rather more impersonal and seems to be of knightly status. His range of themes is greater and his tone more worldly. Thus in one poem he speaks encouragement to the survivors of a lost battle. Of the works of the real Spervogel there is in fact no certain trace preserved.

Despite some modest beginnings of social criticism, it is clear that this simple and harmless style of writing could furnish Walther with nothing but a starting-point. But he took up the tradition of Spruchdichtung and bent it to his own purposes. He ventured to make of it what no one had hitherto dared to do—he turned the simple Spurch into a political poem of the boldest kind, a weapon which he was ready to hurl ruthlessly against Pope or Emperor.

The year 1198, as we know, was a fateful one for the Empire. Henry VI had died and left an infant son. The Hohenstaufen supporters elected Henry's brother Philip king, but a powerful opposition party, headed by Archbishop Adolf of Cologne, refused to accept him and a double election took place. Philip's opponent was Otto, son of Henry the Lion of Bavaria and a Welf. Otto was crowned at Aachen as Otto IV, and Philip soon after at Mainz. A terrible civil war was the result. In the meantime a new Pope had been elected, the powerful and ambitious Innocent III (1198-1216), who soon began to interfere in the affairs of the Empire. After some initial appearance of hesitation he declared in favour of Otto. This was almost inevitable, since the Hohenstaufens had traditionally been hostile to the Papacy, and the Welfs correspondingly friendly. It was in fact to the Pope's interest to have a weak Empire, as in this way he could be assured that there would be no imperial interference in Italy. Innocent's next step was to excommunicate all Philip's supporters. Thus at first fortune seemed to favour Otto, especially as the King of Bohemia and Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia supported him, and he could hope for aid from King John of England. But John's complete defeat at the hands of Philip Augustus of France and his consequent loss of Normandy (1204) deprived Otto of this hope, and the conquest of Cologne seemed to make Philip's victory certain. Even the Pope began to hesitate and started negotiations with the Hohenstaufen party. But the situation was again changed when in 1208 Philip was assassinated at Bamberg by the Count Palatine Otto von Wittelsbach. With Philip's death his party was leaderless, and for a time Otto was undisputed ruler. But even now there was no final decision. Otto fell out with the Pope; Henry VI's young son Frederick, who had meantime grown up in Italy, appeared in Germany and drove Otto into flight. Any lingering hope of help from England vanished with John's crushing defeat at Bouvines (1214), Frederick was crowned at Aachen in 1215, and the whole of Germany except for one small corner fell into his hands. With Otto's death in 1218 this last centre of resistance was removed. Such is the background of Walther's political poems.

The first thing which strikes us about Walther's political activity is that he changed sides more than once. We find him first writing in Philip's interest, then he is in Otto's service, and finally he appears as a supporter of the victorious Frederick II. Nor does this frequent change of sides seem to be entirely independent of Walther's personal advantage. Indeed, he admits as much when, for instance, he takes leave of his first patron Philip with the words ‘King Philip, close observers say you don't like giving’, or later when he says even more scornfully of Otto: ‘I wished to measure my lord Otto's generosity by his length’ (Otto was very tall) … ‘if he were as generous as he is long, he would be virtuous indeed.’ By collecting passages such as these, one can easily make out a case for declaring that Walther was a venal propagandist who put his brilliant gifts at the disposal of any one who would pay him well. Again, if one considers his Reichston in which he shows such concern for the well-being of the Empire, his flaming protests against the Pope and his confession of faith in Germany (Ir sult sprechen willekomen …), it is easy to see in him the first poet of German nationalism.

In fact, after 1198 Walther occupied a rather special position in German society. This position and his own personality together go far to explain, if not perhaps entirely excuse, his political activities. A poet of genius, passionately temperamental, with the sharp eye of a born satirist, a rhymer of the utmost skill with the gift of illuminating a situation in a flash with a brilliant picture—almost indeed a verbal cartoonist—what could he be expected to do? He was on the road, living by his art, but with the important difference from most of his fellow-wanderers that he was a gentleman, socially acceptable at the best courts. His years of wandering meant for him an enormous expansion of his mental horizon. He had to look out for himself and make his way as best he could. Once freed from the cramping court convention, his realistic sense developed to an almost unprecedented extent, while his travels themselves gave him the chance to observe conditions and draw general conclusions. To live, he needed patrons, as did Hergêr and ‘Spervogel’. In his case they were never lacking.

What precisely led Walther to Philip we do not know. Doubtless he had powerful recommendations from influential quarters. In any case Philip welcomed him with open arms as a man already famous, and therefore extremely useful. He was able to sing ‘I have come to the fireside indeed: the Empire and the crown have taken me up’. Doubtless he had already prepared the way with the first poem of his Reichston: Ich saz ûf eime steine, in which he introduces himself sitting in traditional attitude on a stone, plunged in profound thought as the Stuttgart and Heidelberg manuscripts portray him. Here he still seems to be undecided; he does not immediately proclaim himself a supporter of Philip, but describes symbolically the impossibility, in such terrible times, of living as one rightly should. Honour and property and, above all, the grace of God, cannot find their due place because they have no protection. Disloyalty lurks in ambush and force infests the highways, while peace and justice—which it is the king's duty to preserve—are sorely wounded. Till these recover the other three, which make up the real content of life, have no safe-conduct. With a skilled fluency that makes one overlook the somewhat halting imagery, Walther here strikes the right high-minded note to make the maximum appeal at the hard-pressed court, but after all the piece would doubtless have served equally well as an introduction to Otto's circle if this should have been required. In the second of the series (‘I heard a river roaring’) he opposes the natural order of the animal kingdom (as seen through medieval eyes) to the disorder which infests the German kingdom. Even the insect world has its king, and only Germany has none, so that now the ‘petty kings’ of neighbouring states, who really should be subject to the Empire, are beginning to interfere in German affairs. In the last line Walther comes down firmly off the fence: ‘give Philip the crown, and they will have to step back’.

The effect of these and the following poems must have been enormous. How far Walther was prepared to go in his fawning praise of Philip can be seen from his poem on the coronation, in which he declares it to be a miracle that the crown, which is older than Philip, yet fits him as if made to measure, and still more from that on the Christmas festival at Magdeburg, in which he even compares Philip with the Trinity and his wife Maria with the Virgin Mary! But the war went on and in fact increased in violence after the Pope had declared for Otto (1201). Fearlessly, Walther rounded on Innocent III, first probably with a complaint about Constantine's donation of secular power to the Papacy (actually a pious fabrication, as we now know; but Walther, though bitterly regretting it, believed it to be true), and then in the third poem of the Reichston. In this he spoke of double-dealing at Rome and ended by introducing the figure of an old, pious hermit who bewailed, in the name of true Christianity, the youth and inexperience of the Pope. Later, he was not to make even this kind of excuse for Innocent's conduct.

ich hôrte verre in einer klûs
vil michel ungebære:
dâ weinte ein klôsenære,
er klagte gote sîniu leit:
‘owê, der bâbest ist ze junc: hilf, hêrre, dîner kristenheit!’

Far away in a cell I heard much lamentation: there a hermit was weeping. He bewailed his sorrow to God: ‘Alas, the Pope is too young: help thou, O Lord, thy Christendom!’

Soon after this Walther left Philip's service for reasons which certainly seem easier to explain than to excuse, and in November 1203 he was in the train of the Bishop of Passau, with whom he revisited Vienna. Here he apparently made partial peace with the Duke, but was not admitted to permanent membership of the court. It may have been on this occasion that he produced his famous pæan of praise for German breeding and German women, with which he capped Reinmar's famous ‘Hail to thee, woman’, and from which, too, we gain some idea of the extent of his wanderings:

Von der Elbe unz an den Rîn
und her wider unz an Ungerlant
mugen wol die besten sîn
die ich in der werlte hân erkant.
kan ich rehte schouwen
guot gelâz und lîp,
sem mir got, so swüere ich wol daz hie diu wîp
bezzer sint dan ander frouwen.
Tiusche man sint wol erzogen,
rehte als engel sint diu wîp getân.
swer si schildet, derst betrogen:
ich enkan sîn anders niht verstân.
tugent und reine minne,
swer die suochen wil,
der sol komen in unser lant: dâ ist wünne vil:
lange müeze ich leben dar inne!
From the Elbe to the Rhine
and hither back as far as Hungary,
the finest people may well be
that I have known in the world.
If I can rightly judge
good breeding and a goodly figure,
then, by God, I could swear that the women
here are better than ladies elsewhere.
German men are well-bred,
the women fair as angels.
Whoever abuses them is deceived:
I cannot otherwise understand him.
Virtue and pure love—
whoever would seek these,
let him come to our land: there is much joy—
long may I live therein!

These are new tones indeed in Minnesang, and in fact the nationalist note here struck has an unmedieval ring altogether: needless to say it has seemed like a heaven-sent gift to nationalist-minded scholars anxious to stress Walther's patriotism. In fact Walther's wanderings all over Germany at such a time and his services as an imperial propagandist had made him pan-German to an extent that was still unusual. But there was a more immediate reason for his outburst: the Provençal troubadour Peire Vidal had recently appeared at the court of the Hungarian king and had doubtless caused much offence in Vienna by his attacks on the Germans in a song which he delivered there: ‘I find the Germans undistinguished and coarse, and when one of them pretends to be courtly, it is a mortal pain and a horrible distress to see.’ Walther's reply was not undignified, but it does not make him into an apostle of modern nationalism. In other moods he had different and less flattering things to say about the Germans himself.

Not being allowed to stay in Vienna, and having deserted Philip, Walther had to look for another patron, and found him in the ‘generous landgrave’ Hermann of Thuringia. At Hermann's court at the Wartburg he met Wolfram von Eschenbach, and both poets agree in complaining of the noise and rowdiness of this court, where indeed Walther suffered some indignities at the hands of the knight Gerhard Atze. Nevertheless he was a welcome guest in Thuringia later on again. Another poem tells us of wanderings even further afield, ‘from the Seine to the (Austrian) Mur, from the Po to the Trave (near Lübeck)’. What he was doing in Paris and Lübeck we do not know, though we cannot doubt his testimony that he visited these places; at any rate he ultimately turned up at the court of Dietrich of Meissen, in whose train he was when Dietrich appeared at the Diet of Frankfurt to render homage to Otto. Otto had meanwhile been crowned Emperor by the Pope, only to fall, shortly after, under sentence of excommunication because he had not given up territories in Italy which the Papacy claimed. In fact any successful Emperor was in danger of falling foul of the Pope as long as the imperial pretensions to Italy were maintained. Walther now greeted Otto with three poems, all beginning ‘Her keiser’. He assured him of the loyalty of all the princes, advised him to rule firmly and justly, and ended with the impossible advice to embark on a Crusade. The conclusion seems unavoidable that Walther was here playing a double game. The poems were written for Dietrich, who was anything but loyal to Otto in his heart, and was soon to break with him openly. Walther's attitude may possibly be justified by the political standards of the time, but it certainly detracts from the beautiful picture of his idealism which is usually painted. He followed up the poems to Otto with three more in the same metre attacking the Pope on the score of double-dealing. Walther had always hated Innocent, and was doubtless glad of any excuse to attack him. The following year he was able to do so much more violently. Innocent preached a crusade, which Walther himself had—with his tongue in his cheek—been advocating. He had collecting-boxes put in the German churches for this purpose. Walther professed to see in this nothing but a common swindle. His attack this time, with its brilliantly witty picture of the Pope telling his cardinals of his plot to destroy the Empire, knew no bounds and was certainly grossly unfair to Innocent's religious sincerity and even common honesty, though perhaps less so to his political ambitions:

Ahî wie kristenlîche nû der bâbest lachet,
swenner sînen Walhen seit ‘ich hânz alsô gemachet’!
daz er dâ seit, des solt er niemer hân gedâht.
er giht ‘ich hân zwên Allamân undr eine krône brâht,
daz si daz rîche stœren unde wasten.
ie dar under füllen wir die kasten:
ich hâns an mînen stoc gement, ir guot ist allez mîn:
ir tiuschez silber vert in mînen welschen schrîn.
ir pfaffen, ezzet hüenr und trinket wîn,
und lât die tiutschen leien magern unde vasten.’

Ha! in what Christian fashion the Pope laughs when he says to his Italians ‘I've done it!’ (What he says he should never even have thought.) He says ‘I have brought two Germans under one crown that they may ruin and devastate the Empire. Then we always fill our coffers: I've driven them to my collecting-box, all their property is mine: their German silver flows into my Italian safe. Ye priests, eat chicken and drink wine, and let the German laymen grow thin with fasting.’

The effect of this onslaught was considerable, and the Italian canon Thomasin von Zirclære (dei Cerchieri) [in his Der Welsche Gast] reproved Walther for this attack and declared that he had misled thousands of people by it.

After Frederick's arrival in Germany Otto's fate was sealed and Walther, too, openly turned against him, once more with the excuse of his meanness. His attack on Otto was much more sharply expressed than that on Philip. He warmly greeted the new ruler Frederick II and begged for a fief. His request was not immediately fulfilled, and before long we see the now ageing poet once more on the road. He visited Vienna once again and greeted Duke Leopold on his return from crusading. Perhaps about 1220 he at last received the longed-for fief, over which he was jubilant. Of his political writings in this last period mention need only be made of the poems to Archbishop Engelbrecht of Cologne, whom Frederick left as regent in Germany, and whose murder in 1225 he bitterly bewailed, and his warnings to King Henry, Frederick's young son, who was surrounded by evil counsellors who ultimately in fact caused his downfall.

In his old age Walther strikes a more serious note; he becomes sadder and—still half ironically—bewails his worldly life. In one poem he takes leave of Lady World, who is still trying to entice him into the power of the devil, pictured as the lord of a castle. His last datable poem is his so-called elegy (1227-28), which is in fact a palinode or ‘recantation’. ‘Alas,’ he asks, ‘whither have all my years vanished?’ Then, after sadly bewailing the past and comparing it favourably with the present, he suddenly changes his tone completely—it is the most striking of his surprise effects—and reveals his true purpose, the preaching of a crusade. This was Frederick's long-promised expedition whose frequent postponement had finally led to the Emperor's excommunication. The slow, dragging lines based on an expanded form of the Nibelungen stanza are admirably suited to the gloomy picture Walther paints, which is underlined by the refrain ‘evermore alas’. Then Walther pulls himself together, rebukes himself for clinging so much to the transitory joys of this world when those of heaven are there to be won by a stout fighter in God's cause, and calls to the knights ‘Think on this, ye knights, it is your affair!’ If only he could make the journey to the Holy Land—the professed wish of all stay-at-home poets in wartime—then he would sing ‘hurrah’, and nevermore ‘alas’. …

Our estimate of Walther's political morality cannot, in view of what we have seen, be as high as we might wish. On the most favourable interpretation of the facts it is not possible to absolve him from a measure of unscrupulousness. We may admit that he had the good of the Empire at heart and that a strong Emperor was a necessity of the times, but his base desertion of Philip is hard to excuse, while his double-dealing with Otto was far more disgraceful than any open attack could have been. There was perhaps more excuse for his attacks on the Pope, though even here he went too far. On the other hand, his love for the courtly world was sincere, and he took its code of values perhaps more seriously than most of its exponents. Not all his moralising was hypocritical. Throughout his career, as it would seem, Walther composed poems of a religious and ethico-didactic character. His views on such matters betray a surprising measure of theological schooling, but they are enriched, too, by his own experience and feelings, so that such poems are no dry moral treatises, but bear the fresh imprint of his own vivid personality. He wrote poems on the upbringing of the young—always of course with reference to courtly society—and on the ethical and educative value of Minne. Here too he showed his gift of pithy formulation, as when he speaks of the ‘three things’—the grace of God, honour and worldly goods—in the Reichston. This, whether or not Walther got it from a learned source, is in fact an admirable summary of the values of the time: êre (honour in the sense of the esteem in which a knight was held by his fellows) is the essential element of the chivalric code and has absolute value even though it is subordinated to the claims of religion (gotes hulde), while possessions are desirable and legitimate only in so far as their acquisition does not conflict with the claims of honour or religion. Elsewhere Walther says:

Der wîse minnet niht sô sêre,
alsam die gotes hulde und êre:
sîn selbes lîp, wîp unde kint,
diu lât er ê er disiu zwei verliese.
The wise man loves nothing so much
as the grace of God and honour:
his own life, wife and children
he will abandon rather than lose these two.

As regards Walther's relation to religion, there is no indication that he was anything other than an orthodox believer. Attempts to make him into ‘the first Protestant’ on account of his hostility to the Pope are beside the point. The gravamen of his charges against the Pope is that he pursued a worldly policy directed especially against the Empire, thus neglecting his duties as supreme pastor of the whole of Christendom. In any case Walther's papal Sprüche form part of his political, not of his religious poetry. The religious poems do not lack humour, as when Walther prays to God to forgive him all his sins, but admits that he wishes to continue to love his friends more than his enemies, or when in another poem he attacks the three archangels because they do not do more against the infidel! His theological knowledge appears impressively in his leich, a dogmatic exposition of the Trinity. Apart from this we have two crusading songs in neither of which, as has been remarked, can be detected much of the real crusader's enthusiasm. Walther was probably too much of a realist to be carried away by the unpractical idealism of the crusading mood. His so-called elegy is also crusading propaganda, doubtless ordered and paid for by Frederick II.

Walther's faults are too often glossed over, and there is no doubt that he was a difficult person to deal with in real life. But when all is said and done his personality has a very attractive side. His warm humanity can still speak to us with an immediacy we do not feel with other medieval writers. He not only broke down some of the barriers of courtly convention in his own day, but in so doing he did something to break down the barriers which medieval life and thought oppose to our modern understanding. He loved and cherished the courtly world of his time above all things, and deeply regretted the signs of decay which he found within it. His aim was the purification and humanisation of the existing order, not its destruction. Yet he was able to see and judge his world more objectively than most of his contemporaries, as if in a certain sense he were superior to it. What attracts us in particular today—and for this we can forgive him much—is the sound sense with which he grasped the common humanity of everybody. Pope and Emperor are for him, in the last analysis, only men who can err and sin, and the same attitude is even more refreshingly apparent towards the noble ladies whom the convention of courtly love had elevated to almost divine status: ‘Women must ever be woman's highest name’, he declares, and thus says the last word on hohe Minne. He was, of course, no more of a democrat in the modern sense than he was a Luther, but it is not altogether fanciful to claim that there is something in his writing and his attitude that points forward, out of the medieval sphere. …