Hartmann von Aue (c. 1160-c. 1205) was a medieval German literary figure who wrote epic poems in the minnesang tradition. The Minnesinger were court poets who lived and worked inside the great castles of princes and other nobles and whose work paid homage to the concept of "minne," or love. Their predecessors were the Provençal troubadours of the eleventh century, and von Aue's work shared attributes of both these and the Arthurian legends popular at the time.

Of Swabian Origins

Little is known of von Aue's life, save for the fact that he lived and worked in the later decades of the twelfth century and was alive during the first years of the 1200s. The Middle High German language of his verse has Alemannic traces, which points to his origins near the region that became Swabia and the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. He...