Oransch

Wolfram von Eschenbach has a gift for describing his scenes of action in a wonderfully vivid manner. The philologist Samuel Singer was struck by this and illustrated it with the following passage:

The besieging heathens march up to the castle. Their names are generally the same as in the source, except that one name Amis de Cordres, in Aliscans 1779 98:14, was turned into two: Amis und Cordeiz. These source names are supplemented by earlier ones, so that their number is greater than by Wolfram. But above all, Wolfram does not merely sum them up; each one is assigned a special position opposite one of the five gates of the castle, which he apparently visualized exactly according to the model of a town he knew: two of the gates are situated in front of the palace (Wh. 97:17): gein dem palas gelegen. The third one faces the plain (Wh. 97:28): diu uz gienc gein dem plane. The liberated Christians were ordered to defend the castle on the other side, something that is not explicitly mentioned in the source (Wh. 96:20-24):

Willehalm der kurteise, | The chivalric Willehalm entrusted
al die porte und drobe die wer | all the gates and defences above
bevalh er dem erlosten her | to the liberated Christians
daz er in dem woldean | that he had rescued in the attack
bî den soumen dort gewan. | upon the heathens with the baggage train.[1]

Thus, Wolfram von Eschenbach pays more attention to detail than does his source Aliscans and Singer assumes that Wolfram is apparently referring exactly to the model of a town he knew.

This is very likely. One feels at once invited to discover the town in the medieval geography that must have served Wolfram as his model for describing Oransch.

We know that Wolfram called himself a Bavarian, that he comes from a German town presently called Wolframs-Eschenbach in the region of Mittelfranken near Nuremberg, and that he lived for a while at the court of Hermann von Thuringia. Scattered throughout his epics Willehalm and Parzival, Wolfram mentions several towns in these regions. Next to Eschenbach: Abenberg, Truhendingen, Dollnstein, Nördlingen, Wertheim, Wildenberg and Erfurth. He also must have known Onoldsbach (Ansbach), Nuremberg, Rothenburg, Dinkelsbühl, Pleinfeld, Ellingen, Weissenburg, Merkendorf, Gunzenhausen, Kitzingen or other places. Upon scouring these areas, however, one finds not a single town that anywhere approximates Wolfram’s description of Oransch.

In attempting to reconstruct the contours of a medieval town, one soon begins to doubt whether Singer’s supposed model could ever be found. Wolfram’s Oransch is minutely described by the poet and, to be sure, very plausibly, but when looked at closer, Wolfram’s town of Oransch turns out to be a rather peculiar place indeed.

While studying the ground plan of this accurately described town, one is hard put to even consider it realistic. Wolfram’s indications seem to contradict each other. He says the town has an inner as well as an outer ring and that Giburc and her father have religious conversations there, apparently over and above an entire part of the town. This peculiarity arises when Giburc for that purpose goes to a window of her palace, while her father, who is besieging the town, is standing in a field in front of the town gate, thus outside the outer rampart. How could a conversation get started at all over such a distance?

In spite of Singer’s assumption that Wolfram is describing a very definite and familiar town, one is inclined to doubt the validity of his description and thus refer his seemingly so concrete details to the fictitious realm of poetry. One could in any case come to the conclusion that it would be better to stop trying to identify the town that Wolfram may have used as a model for describing the events in Oransch. The setting for the religious conversation is so improbable that such a scene could hardly ever be located in geographical reality.

Yet this first objection is not sufficient for refuting Singer’s assumption, for this assumption by a present-day Wolfram researcher is confirmed by an earlier and just as competent a judge.

Now, it is certainly not our intention to merely bring in the opinions of authorities or juxtapose them and – instead of judging for ourselves – believe in the authority of such experts. In this case, it is a matter of redeeming an expert from the past or having him join the discussion, an expert whose reliability is unjustly being questioned. Since Simrock’s assumption that fiction is being offered as non-fiction, the best expert on Willehalm’s material has unjustly been misrepresented by the majority of present-day Wolfram researchers. This underrated expert is none other than Wolfram von Eschenbach himself.

Wolfram assures us that in his Willehalm he is narrating a true story down to every detail. True not in the sense of poetic justice, but in the sense that the narrative matches the corresponding historical events.

In his prologue to Willehalm, Wolfram von Eschenbach tells us very clearly and with the whole moral weight of his stern personality from what exalted and ambitious viewpoint he is issuing his report. He states openly that he is not the author of his story. He relates as a matter of fact that this miraculous story comes from France and that it is true in all its details. His translation is not marred by any additions or deletions.

underswanc noch underreit | No interruption or interpolation
gevalsche dise rede nie: | ever distorted this tale.

Thus speaks a man who like no other occupied himself with Willehalm (Wh. 4:12,13).

Whoever gives any credence to Wolfram’s assurances in his prologue to Willehalm, is naïve in the eyes of a great number of Wolfram researchers. He earns a smile but is not taken seriously; more than 100 years of philological research seem to have passed him by without a trace. Three or four generations of research have indeed invested an inconceivable amount of intelligence in critically examining Wolfram’s assurances, yet they have not succeeded in proving Wolfram’s references to be either true or false.

With respect to Parzival, Wolfram bases himself on a source, an informant named Kyot. Nobody believes him. Kyot adherents and sceptics are opposed like two religious confessions. Unfortunately, historians have been unable to help either, because there are no historical documents extant with which the truth of Wolfram’s claims can be proven. Hence, it is believed that Parzival is not based on any historical fact. Our historical knowledge is also fragmentary with respect to Wolfram’s Willehalm. It is true, Loys = Louis the Pious and Willehalm = William of Orange are recognized as historical personalities, but in the absence of corresponding historical documents, no value judgment can be made regarding Wolfram’s account.

In this unpromising situation, philology has resorted to a measure with which the solution to this problem can be averted. The viewpoint has been taken that in the field of poetry every conceivable linkage of motives is possible. It is said that Wolfram does not override poetic principles in presenting us fiction as truth. From a philological point of view, it is not a question at all whether Kyot existed or not, and whether the French told the truth with respect to Willehalm.

Since sidestepping the problem, philology has on the whole been concerned with more formalistic research into Wolfram’s work. Those philologists who out of their general scientific background are still posing questions no longer considered to be philologically correct, are not taken seriously in professional circles. There are therefore less and less researchers with questions concerning Kyot. As the Kyot problem was sidetracked – philologists call it sublimation – this issue has not received the treatment desirable from a historical as well as a philological viewpoint. With every specialist, historian as well as philologist, shut up in his professional field and striking problems from his program that can only be mastered in concert with other faculties, essential questions will remain unanswered.

We would like to offer a solution to the Kyot problem by assuming a non-specialist viewpoint and invite, next to the philologist and the historian, also a geographer to join our research team.

As historical means of comparison are missing and as, philologically speaking, there seem to be no problems left, we have come to assess Wolfram’s references in a new manner. We will first examine the truthfulness of his geographic references by asking, in the first instance, whether Wolfram’s scenes of action of the Willehalm plot can be located geographically.

Singer’s assumption that Wolfram describes realities should prompt us to try to find the scenes of action in the geographical reality with the working hypothesis that Wolfram’s descriptions are true. We will not question his claim to be telling the truth, because we are making an experiment: we want to see what results from the consciously adopted viewpoint that instead of wanting to mislead us, Wolfram is relating true events.
Kyot opponents and Kyot followers agree on one point. Both of them equally admire Wolfram von Eschenbach as the greatest of Middle High German poets. Both place him alongside Goethe and rightly so. But we do injustice to these two cultural heroes by only admiring their art of poetry and not attempting to understand them in a field where they designated themselves superior to others. After all, Goethe did not care much about his poetry. What mattered to him was his colour theory. Neither did Wolfram appreciate his art of poetry all that much. But he was convinced to be greater than others, because it was granted to him to examine the truthfulness of the story he heard about. He admits that he can neither read nor write. He speaks, however, of a gift for conveying the truth as an art that is due to God’s righteousness. What he says about Kyot also applies to him (Wh. 2:16,17):

der rehten schrift dôn unde wort | Thy spirit has informed the sound
dîn geist hât gesterket | and the words of Holy Scriptures

Separating truth from falsehood is the proper task of the historical researcher. Wolfram characterizes himself as a historian through his aspirations to tell the truth. He is proud of being in a better position than others to tell what is true or false regarding the French tradition of Chrétien de Troyes.

Just as we are discovering Goethe anew today as a natural scientist without therefore appreciating him any less as a poet, we should also decide to recognize Wolfram von Eschenbach as a historian without lessening his stature as a poet. Wolfram himself is no less critical than a present-day researcher. He struggled to find the truth of Willehalm’s life and is convinced to have succeeded in recognizing this truth and in conveying it without falsehood.

Our task must be to examine his research results with our present means of research and, should they prove to be airtight, to acknowledge them.

Access to Wolfram’s frame of mind could be found by immersing ourselves in an unbiased way in his thoughts and then observing what insights we can gain thereby.

Our working hypothesis is to take Wolfram seriously, to deal with his accounts as historical facts, to first understand his references and then to linger with all the details until they no longer contain any contradictions. Should this experiment not succeed immediately, we have to ask ourselves what we did wrong and look for other points of view until everything fits in without fail and is mutually supporting.

In this sense we now want to examine what we did wrong in supposing that no religious conversation could have been held over a distance of two Oransch town walls. Assuming a positive attitude we ask: Wolfram reports that Giburc and Terramer held a religious conversation. What must the locality, the setting for this scene, therefore be like in order for Wolfram’s references to be right?

Position of the Inner City in the Outer Ring Figure 1. Concentric – Figure 2. Eccentric

outer ring in between (Figure 2).

It is certain that the inner and outer ring of Oransch may not be represented as concentric circles (Figure 1). The outer ring would then be a hindrance. The inner ring must lie eccentrically and the palace from the outer ring too must be conceived as lying at the edge of the smaller ring, close enough to the wall of the outer ring so that there are no houses from the

If we imagine the palace window from which Giburc is speaking to be very high, so high that one can see the field in front of the gate above both town walls, then it could be possible to make oneself heard over such a distance. In that way, Giburc and her father could shout to each other to be heard.

Yet Wolfram does not say they shouted, but that they spoke. Concerning Giburc we read si sprach (she spoke, Wh. 215:10) and neither did Terramer raise his voice in answering. Wolfram says (Wh. 217:10-11):

daz ich sölh kint ie gewann, | that I ever had such a child,
sprach Terramêr der rîche. | said the mighty Terramer.

True to our working hypothesis – to give Wolfram credence – we must bring Terramer and Giburc a little bit closer together.

The special position of the inner town of Oransch in the outer ring must be conceived as being much more extreme than we have represented it until now. This eccentric position can be recognized in the passage describing how the heathens were deployed. Singer’s quotation reads that two gates are situated gein dem palas (near the palace). This is indeed more or less the case, but Singer’s representation is not yet precise enough to satisfy Wolfram’s requirements. According to Wolfram, one gate was situated (Wh. 97:17 ff.):

…..gein dem palas | …. near the palace
dâ Gyburc selbe ûffe was. | where Giburc herself was.

The second gate was also situated on the inner ring, not where Giburc was looking out on, but on the opposite side of the inner ring, which Giburc could not see while speaking from Glorjet Palace with her father. Since both city gates do not open onto the inner but onto the outer ring, and since Giburc’s palace window – in the inner ring – is situated right above Terramer’s army camp, the inner ring must extend at this place beyond the periphery of the outer ring. When we conceive of the outer ring as a circle and imagine a smaller circle, with its centre on this circle, extending half into the larger circle and half beyond it, we then approximate the situation we need in order to find Wolfram’s references confirmed (Figure 3). The wall of the outer ring now runs at a right angle into the wall of the inner ring. This inner ring is, as it were, swallowed by the wall of the outer ring. The inner ring extends at this point beyond the outer one.

Figure 4. Landscape with a Plain , Valley, River and Mountain

Assuming that the wall of Giburc’s palace was an integral part of the inner as well as the outer town wall, then her palace has some windows still situated in the inner ring above the alley leading to the gate; it has perhaps a window directly above the wall and the gate of the outer ring, and it has at least one window outside the outer ring above the ditch or above the plain in front of the city gate where Terramer has deployed his army. When Giburc goes to this window, Terramer can come directly beneath her window when he wants to speak with her. This matches Wolfram’s description of the situation precisely (Wh. 97:17 ff.):

Terramêr und rois Tybalt | Terramer and King Tybalt
sich schône leiten mit gewalt | deployed their whole army
für die porten gein dem palas | in front of the gates near the palace
dâ Gyburc selbe ûffe was | where Giburc herself was.

When we now follow the deployment of the heathens further, we learn that Phereiz and Korsant andersîte lâgen (were deployed on the other side). There is therefore a second gate in Oransch on the other side of the inner ring, where the situation is like a mirror image. We will see later that Willehalm’s palace Thermis is located there. This palace too has windows looking out directly onto the army camps of Poheiriz and Korsant.

The third gate, which is being besieged by King Margot Pozzidant, looks out – so Wolfram tells us – on the plain. The location of the fourth gate is thought to be, because no topographical details are given, opposite Giburc’s palace, beyond the outer city furthest away from the outer town wall. This gate was delegated to Fabors (Wh. 98:5). The fifth gate, where Halzebier is deployed, is to be found opposite the third gate on the right side of the outer town wall.

This ground plan of Oransch derived from Wolfram’s description shows a townscape, which apparently does not lie on a plain. When the contours of the land do not dictate something else, an outer ring is usually built concentrically around the inner castle. We should therefore ask what sort of landscape there could be that matches Wolfram’s townscape in a realistic way. Wolfram indicates something typical: the third gate leads onto a plain. He also says that Terramer wanted to attack the town from all sides, from the mountain and the valley (Wh. 111:6). We thus have to reckon with a plain, a mountain and a valley.

There are two possible ways of explaining the eccentric position of the inner ring in connection with these topographical elements: either this inner part of the town lies on or against a mountain, or it is surrounded by water and lies on a semi-peninsula. We could assume a semi- peninsula formed by a navigable river as a special protection for the inner ring. If the river is small, we could also consider a semi-peninsula-like terrace with a steep edge as such a protection. However, this semi-peninsula position would hardly be conceivable without reference to a bridge or a ford. And Wolfram mentions no such passage, not even a river of sorts.

The circumstance that gates one and two are situated right on the spot where both rings interpenetrate leads one to believe that the mountain site we are looking for lies between these pair of gates. The inner castle leans against the edge of this mountain. That the castle must be represented as leaning against the mountain and not as standing on top of the mountain is borne out by the fact that Terramer also wanted to attack from the mountain, which would be impossible if the mountain were enclosed by the rampart up as far as its very top. The mountain must lie – in order to match Wolfram’s description – below the top, for otherwise it could not, as already mentioned, be attacked from above. We therefore have gate one, at the foot of the mountain but already located on the plain, which leads into the outer ring. As its mirror image, we have gate two, and between these pair of gates we imagine the mountain and that half of the inner ring, which, leaning against the mountain, extends beyond the outer ring. That the third gate leads onto the plain is expressly stated by Wolfram. The side of the valley, thus the place where a river – a rather insignificant one – must flow by, would then have to be represented by gate four or five. One tends to say four or five, because gate five, without the exit into a valley, must be located as a mirror image to gate three and must also lead onto a plain. In that way, we have reconstructed the ground plan of Oransch according to Wolfram’s references (Figure 4).

Plate 1. The Roman Theatre of Orange, France

Wolfram describes even further details with which the buildings can be reconstructed. Inner Oransch withstood Terramer’s assault. The might of this castle is described as unique (Wh. 95:1; 111:2; 251:22): Oransch is the best of all castles.

A major part of this inner Oransch seems to be Giburc’s palace Glorjet. This building however has a counterpart: Willehalm’s palace Termis. We can discover interesting details about both of these buildings. They must have been magnificent structures made of “measured and cut” stone (Wh. 142:11), which differed noticeably from the other Carolingian castles. At Loys’ court in Munleun, Rennewart hurls a page an eine steinîne sûl (against a stone pillar, Wh. 190:15). In Oransch, Rennewart leans his rod against a vault supported by many high marble pillars (Wh. 270:2). Blue marble and measured or quarried stone were not everyday Carolingian building materials. The predicate “measured” stone points to Rome. The Romans erected monumental buildings with measured stones (Plate 1).

The huge rectangular blocks of stone were measured and hewn so exactly that they could be, without cement, stacked up without gaps. Such Roman buildings are still standing today, with blocks of stone – in spite of weather conditions and earthquakes – so smoothly joined together that it is impossible to insert a piece of paper between them.

The Franks preferred transforming Roman castles into Imperial Courts. Yet their castles usually consisted of masonry built with cement, and not of “measured” stones. Willehalm thus lived in a castle that, even according to Roman standards, had a monumental character.

Now that we have drawn with the aid of Wolfram’s references a “robotic image” of the town of Oransch, we can try to find this town in the geographical reality. True to our working hypothesis in regarding Wolfram’s indications as accurate as long as we are not forced to mistrust him, the course for this search is set out. We do not start our search anywhere within Wolfram’s world of experience, but at the place where he himself says that one should look. Wolfram says clearly where the scenes around Oransch occurred: in Orangis. He mentions Willehalm von Oransch by the name the French have given him (Wh. 3:10):

er ist en franzoys genant | In French he is called
kuns Gwillâms de Orangis. | Count William of Orange.

It is generally known that Orangis is Orange in the south of France.

We now compare our robotic image of Oransch with the geography of Orange, and surprise: the result indicates that Wolfram is right. Our robotic image matches reality (Figure 5).

Surprised are naturally only those who heretofore assumed that Wolfram used a certain version of the Bataille d’Alliscans as his source and that his additions are drawn from his own poetic fantasy. Whoever is able to lay this assumption aside is not surprised by the result, for according to Wolfram’s own words, one would expect the description to match reality. Now that the town, which according to Singer’s assumption Wolfram must have had in mind, has been located, the unprejudiced reader would expect the additional details from Wolfram’s description to be verified as well.

What is the story here?

South of the town of Orange, leaning against the edge of the Eutrope Mountain – with the semi-circular rows of the spectator seats partly hewn into the rock of this mountain – still stand the ruins today of the Roman theatre of Orange (Plate 2).

Plate 2. The Stage of the Roman Theatre in Orange

This enormous structure with the 103-meter long and 38-meter high proscenium wall built with rectangular blocks of hewn and smoothly stacked stones is Giburc’s Palace Glorjet (Figure 6).

Figure 5. Oransch in Present-day Orange Figure 6. Glorjet Palace with 38-m. high Pinnacle

West of this building we have the ruins of the Roman Gymnasium. It is somewhat smaller than the theatre, but has almost the same ground plan. The geographer recognizes this building – this may also be of interest to philologists – as Willehalm’s palace Termis (Plate 3).

Plate 3. Roman Temple or Gymnasium in Orange – Site of Willehalm’s Thermis

Both of these huge Roman monuments essentially constitute in the 9^th century the inner ring of the town of Orange called Oransch by Wolfram.

Where once the outer ring of the town ran into the inner ring, is where today the road to Avignon passes close by the east side of the theatre (Plate 4).

Plate 4. East Side of the Roman Theatre On the Road to Avignon

The walls of the theatre supported the archway of the town gate leading into the outer ring. The obliquely patched up surface against the wall of the theatre that formed the support for the archway can still be recognized (Plate 5).

Plate 5. Archway of Gate One of the Roman Theatre

The moat around the outer ring went from the theatre along Rue de l’Hôpital, which runs in a great curve to the left towards the square at Rue Saint-Florent and Rue des Vieux Ramparts. In the Middle Ages, the street front of the buildings facing the town on this street formed the wall of the outer ring. The facades of the houses are standing partly on the foundations of this non-Roman town wall (Plate 6).

Plate 6. View from the Window Recess of the Roman Theatre

This street – Rue des Vieux Ramparts – that was built on top of the filled-up moat, runs in a curve around the Saint-Florent quarter to the small stream Meyne. The fifth gate was located there near a ford or a bridge. From this gate, Halzebiers followed the town wall along the course of the Meyne in a large curve until he reached the northern part of the town, i.e. from Wolfram’s fifth gate to the fourth. Through this fourth gate, the street leads underneath the Roman Arch of Triumph (Plate 7) northwards up into the valley of the Rhone.

Plate 7. Roman Arch of Triumph in Orange

In front of this gate – the one of Fabors – the westward course of the medieval outer ring cannot be recognised as clearly. It is possible that the walls of the Roman stadium formed the western walls of the outer ring. In this case, the outer ring would have run back perpendicularly to the Roman Thermal baths, respectively to Willehalm’s Palace Termis. Perhaps there also existed towards the plain, which extends from the town until the Rhone, a semi-circular town enclosure with the third gate in the middle.

On the basis of this geographical information, we would now like to analyse the two scenes in which Wolfram describes how Willehalm approached the town after the first battle and a second time upon his return from Munleun.

The first time he approaches from the south where, by the sea at Alischanz, he had done battle. From afar he already recognizes Mount Eutrope with at its foot the mighty block of the Roman Theatre. Willehalm knows he cannot draw any conclusions from this striking silhouette as to the situation in Oransch. This silhouette would appear the same irrespective of whether Glorjet would be intact or burned down. The roof of the palace is the decisive factor. This desk-like, southwards ascending roof, overshadowed by the proscenium wall, did not extend beyond the fireproof walls capable of withstanding any and all siege equipment, and thus Willehalm remained in doubt about Giburc’s lot until being in a position to recognize the roof. If Wolfram describes the situation accordingly, he must situate the moment from which Willehalm can rest assured at the place where he cannot only recognize the silhouette of the palace, but also its roof. Wolfram describes this moment as follows (Wh. 82:15):

So ritt der unversagte, | Then the undaunted man rode
dass ihn niemand erjagte, | so no one could overtake him,
und er Oransch ersah: | until he spied Orange
ûf dem palas sîn liehtez dach. | and on the palace its gleaming roof.

Troubled by the same anxiety, Willehalm rides a second time towards Oransch. He is returning from Munleun. This time his anxiety about Giburc’s lot is even greater, because the burning town gives rise to the worst scenario: will he arrive in time with his imperial troops to save inner Oransch and Giburc? We accompany Willehalm on his charge and wait for the moment when he can recognize whether the palace still supports the burning roof. But this moment does not come. At the break of day, Willehalm sees through the smoke of the burning town that the palace is still standing; but what about the roof? Was Glorjet intact or burned out? By not saying a word about this, Wolfram shows himself to be an expert. Willehalm comes from the north this time. He hurries down the Rhone valley. Passing through the Roman Arch of Triumph, he arrives at the fourth gate of the outer town. There he discovers that Terramer’s army camp has been cleared. Between this gate and Glorjet Palace lies the burning town. Wolfram must have known this geographical situation exactly. He says (Wh. 226:16-19):

Terramêr von Tenabrî | Terramer and Tenabri
und Fâbors von Mecka | and Fabors of Mecca
daz gese gerûmet hêten dâ. | had already abandoned camp

Why does he, next to Terramer, not also mention Tybalt or another army commander from the great number of all the possible names? He does this for the sake of the exactness of his report. Willehalm is now standing in front of the fourth gate and in Wh. 98:4 Wolfram informed us that this gate had been delegated to Fabors – together with Ehmereiz, Morgowanz and Passigweiz and their troops. Therefore, he names the supreme commander, and besides that also the subordinate commander Fabors who was stationed there.

From the fourth gate, Willehalm now advances with Rennewart through the burning town. Near the square in front of the Theatre he arrives at the closed gate of inner Oransch. He recognizes people on the roof terrace. Now he knows that not everyone is dead. He shouts up to the roof terrace: “Is the Queen still alive?”

Up on the roof terrace, nobody knew who had ridden onto the square. The Queen, who knows this time that Willehalm is wearing Arofel’s armour and no longer riding on Puzzat but Volatin, does not recognize him. She shouts to him in a heathen language.

Why does Wolfram go to all this trouble? Is it to make his story more exciting?

When Willehalm came riding from the sea, Giburc recognized him by the scar on his nose, and now when she could have recognized him by Arofel’s armour she shouts to him in a heathen language. Why does Willehalm in this situation not simply remove his helmet so as to identify himself by his scar? Why does he shout up to where the lucid Giburc is, when it is she who is standing above him on the roof terrace and had shouted to him in a heathen language?

Wolfram is explaining to us what these circumstances are based on when he has Giburc answer (Wh. 228:18,19):

ich wil iu fürbaz nâhen | I will come closer to you
unt kündeclîcher werden kurc. | and show myself more plainly.

The present scene in front of the gate differs from the previous one above all by the circumstance that Willehalm and Giburc are much further apart this time. Giburc would have had to come closer in order to recognize him. The first time Willehalm was standing in front of the first gate of the outer rampart. Giburc stood above him on the defense and was in a similar position as a wife today speaking from the window of her living room on the first floor to her husband standing in front of her in the garden. She recognizes details like the scar on her husband’s nose. In the second scene the situation is totally different. Now Willehalm is not in front of one of the known gates of the outer ring, but in front of the main gate of the inner ring, i.e. in front of the 38-meter high proscenium wall of the Roman Theatre. Giburc had been told that an army was seen approaching. This had been observed from the roof terrace through the smoke of the burning town. The burning outer ring lies to the north of Glorjet Palace and in order to see who is marching onto the town, Giburc must also ascend to the roof terrace of the palace, i.e. onto the highest spot of the proscenium wall of the Roman Theatre situated to the north. From there, she sees above and beyond the smoking town the approaching horsemen riding on the road to the Arch of Triumph.

From below Willehalm, who rushed there in advance of his troops, shouts at this moment if the Queen is still alive. Giburc’s position is higher than the roof of the palace that must be thought of as hidden by the roof terrace towards the south. From the street, Willehalm could not see this roof and he therefore does not know the shape of the roof terrace behind it either. Giburc is standing 38 meter above him; from this height Willehalm and Rennewart appear almost like ants. One can compare it with present-day circumstances by imagining a woman, who previously had spoken to her husband from the first floor of her house, now placed up on the 13^th floor of a high-rise apartment building. The roof terrace of the palace is that high. Wolfram is not specific about this, but the whole scene is put together in such a way that everything appears realistic only on the presupposition that Wolfram had known the exact height of this roof palace. Giburc finally recognised Willehalm – and properly so – not by his scar, but by his voice. Even without Giburc’s helplessness, Willehalm would have had to wait sometime before Giburc had come down to him from her church steeple-like height.

Using Wolfram’s exact references, even the hall can be located today from which Giburc spoke with her father. It is located above the eastern main spectator entrance, but was walled up in Willehalm’s time. It is the room next to the foyer above which the top semi-circular seating rows begin.

Standing in its windows, one looks out on the road to Avignon directly in front of the former town gate leading to the battlefield. We say, as Wolfram does, “in these windows”, because he also says (Wh. 234:30):

in den vestern wart gelegen | reclined in the window recesses

This expression is accurate; the walls of the Roman Theatre are so massive that a window recess assumes the size of a room.

Thus, when standing in these windows recesses, Wolfram’s descriptions prove to be absolutely accurate and one is filled with growing respect for the realism of his descriptions. This aspect also throws a light on the uneasiness that overcomes Wolfram when other writers of history describe events inexactly. If we adopt the stance of a poet it is, for example, totally irrelevant whether it is reported that Willehalm wore tweed or Arofels’ armour. If however one adopts, like Wolfram, the stance of a historian, then it does make a difference whether Willehalm appeared before Loys in Arofel’s armour or in tweed.

From these circumstances, it must be concluded that regarding Wolfram only as a poet is not to evaluate him in a professional manner. Upon closer examination Wolfram turns out to be just as much a historian and a geographer as a poet. He speaks not as a specialist, but as an encompassing personality committed to the truth. Whoever studies his biography objectively must include the whole person Wolfram von Eschenbach in his reflections. If one comes a step closer to Wolfram’s claim to be telling the truth, one has thereby also done a service to a more exact philology.

We hope that our geographical research may also be helpful to those philologists who still view the Kyot problem as unresolved. We therefore plan to continue this unusual course and not to rest until Wolfram’s accounts are fully transparent.

In the foregoing pages we attempted to confirm Singer’s presumption that Wolfram had a quite definite town in mind. This impression becomes evident on re-examining Wolfram’s descriptions at first hand. Wolfram really did have a quite definite town in mind, namely that particular town in which the events according to his conviction took place: the town of Orange in Provence.

This is by no means proof as yet that the described events really did take place. Wolfram could perhaps have used Orange as a setting for his Oransch. His detailed knowledge about this town certainly presupposes that he must have been in Orange himself. That he took his descriptions of Orange from a travel report seems very doubtful. There is, to be sure, an instance in which a poet incorporates a traveller’s report so skilfully that the impression arises that the poet knows the area from first hand: Frederick Schiller’s William Tell.

In this case, however, the traveller was indeed a very special one who, for the purpose of writing the William Tell plot, had already looked at the localities that must have been known by the poet. With this special traveller – the poet Goethe – this condition was fulfilled, because Goethe originally had the idea of adapting the William Tell saga, which he knew from Tschudi’s Swiss Chronicle, into a work of poetry himself. With this in mind, he consciously followed Tell’s traces. How intensively he did this, can be read by Eckerman:

Goethe related to us that in the year 1797 he had planned to adapt the Tell saga as an epic poem in hexameters.

“In the same year,” he said, “I visited the small cantons, and the Lake of the Four Cantons (Vierwaldstättersee); and this charming, magnificent, grand scenery made once more such an impression on me, that it induced me to picture the variety and richness of so incomparable a landscape in a poem …I was quite full of this beautiful subject, and was already humming my hexameters. I saw the lake in the quiet moonlight, illuminated mists in the depth of mountains…I related all this to Schiller, in whose soul my landscapes and my acting figures formed themselves into a drama. And as I had other things to do, and the execution of my design was deferred more and more, I gave up my subject entirely to Schiller, who thereupon wrote this admirable play.” [2]

The adoption by Schiller of someone else’s material does not render him less a poet, anymore than Wolfram turning historic events into poetry.

If Hermann of Thuringia was Wolfram’s traveller, they could well have had the same relationship as the one between Goethe and Schiller. It was after all this Hermann of Thuringia who first acquainted Wolfram with his material for Willehalm.

Without Willehalm’s story as a guideline, a traveller could deliver a beautiful travel report from Provence, yet without having looked at those specific localities that the poet needed in order to fashion the Willehalm plot this report would be useless.

If I may make a personal remark here: I knew Provence for decades before I began – relatively late – to study Wolfram’s Willehalm more thoroughly. As a young man I climbed the row of seats of the Roman Theatre in Orange without knowing that I was in Giburc’s Glorjet Palace. I made canoe trips up and down the canal from Arles to Port-de-Bouc without knowing that I was paddling on Wolfram’s Larkant, and I was standing in the large cemetery Les Alyscamps without having the slightest notion that I had set foot on Wolfram’s battlefield Alischanz. As a matter of fact, I had already then studied this necropolis. I had read all the travel reports and compared them to what the place looked like now. It was thanks to such a travel report, by Mylius, that later on, while reading Wolfram’s Willehalm, I could all at once clearly visualize the site and find its exact location. This echo from reading Wolfram’s battle report of a previous travel experience prompted me to do further research into the scenes of the Willehalm plot. Prior to that, I would not have been able to describe to a poet what details he needed for writing his work. I therefore doubt that Wolfram had the region described to him by a traveller, unless it had been Hermann of Thuringia. But Hermann of Thuringia did more, he not only described Provence to Wolfram, he also showed it to him.

Wolfram von Eschenbach knew Provence personally; this is the impression one gets more and more clearly. He inspected all those sites that he needed to know for marking out his Willehalm.

Why would Wolfram as a poet have gone to all this trouble, if he – as is maintained – merely wrote a poem and for that purpose, instead of Orange, could have chosen for example Dinkelsbühl, Rothenburg or just only Merkendorf (Plate 8) or for that matter his (German) hometown Eschenbach as a setting?

Plate 8. Castle Merkendorf in Germany

His motive choosing this complicated scenario I see in his striving to communicate to us not his own ‘free’ poetry, but, as he himself expressly states, a certain historical tradition, which Hermann of Thuringia handed down to him.

It would not come as a surprise to learn that Wolfram together with Hermann of Thuringia had visited the scenes of the Willehalm plot as “pilgrims” then and there. The more one re-examines his references, including those concerning the battlefield of Alischanz, the less it becomes possible to avoid this impression.

We have chosen Orange as the first example of Wolfram’s encompassing detailed knowledge, because Glorjet Palace is still standing there today – after its reconstruction as a Roman Theatre – in the approximate form again it must have had in the days of Willehalm. Yet, Orange could prove to be an exception. We therefore want to also get an impression of a setting from the Willehalm plot that is situated in open country. This brings us to the battlefield of Alischanz.

***

[1] Samuel Singer, Wolframs Willehalm, Bern 1918, p. 40.

[2] Eckerman, Conversations with Goethe, May 6 1827.