Introduction: Text and Narrator at the End of Lohengrin

IF THE WARTBURGKRIEG is the primary point of intertextual reference for understanding the beginning of Lohengrin, the Sächsische Weltchronik (Saxon World Chronicle) takes on a comparable significance at its end. The Weltchronik, which is believed to have originated in the Magdeburg area in the early 1230s, is drawn on throughout the text—for instance, in the battles on the Unstrut and Garigliano during the reign of Henry I. Its sustained appropriation, however, is most apparent between Lohengrin's departure for the Grail and the epilogue— in a survey of the Ottonian rulers from the demise of Henry I to Henry II (strophes 731–62). The status of this earlier text is different from that of the Wartburgkrieg insofar as it provides material for the content of the story, rather than presenting the situation of its telling; but the connection with Wolfram's role as narrator remains. He appears to be relating, albeit at an accelerated pace, developments following the departure of the hero and the death of the emperor for whom he had fought: “Daz ich iu sage daz ist wâr: / der keiser des rîches pflac ahtzehen iâr” (What I’m telling you is true: the emperor [Henry I] reigned for eighteen years; 731.7301–2). The irony, from a modern perspective, is that Wolfram the narrator does this with the help of a text (i.e., the Weltchronik) that was probably written after the lifetime of Wolfram the author,5 whom the Lohengrin poet presents as a model in the epilogue that follows the Ottonian strophes:

The end of Lohengrin could, therefore, be seen as doubly derivative. The identity of the Wolfram-narrator is determined by the earlier author's reputation, his words by the content of an antecedent text— and if this gives rise to an impression of hybridity, that impression might well be strengthened by the stylistic contrast between the largely straightforward, matter-of-fact diction in the Ottonian strophes and the language of the epilogue as exemplified in the quotation above.