Das Verhältnis von Ich-Erzähler und Autorschaft in der ›Mörin‹ (1453) Hermanns von Sachsen-heim: Vom Manuskript zur Drucküberlieferung

Abstract

The paper deals with the poem ›Die Mörin‹ by the Swabian nobleman Hermann von Sachsenheim, written in 1453. Within the late medieval German-language genre of Minnereden, this text is remarkable not only for its unusual length (6070 verses) and its structural moments of content, which are often contrary to the conventions of the genre, but also for its unusually broad tradition, also including the print medium (a total of twelve textual witnesses, four of which are early prints). The focus here is specifically on the question of the implications of the chosen homodiegetic narrative form for the staging of authorship and the authorisation of the narrative. To this end, two different but ultimately interlocking aspects are considered. Firstly (in the first section) the text itself, i.e. with a view to the functional interlocking of the complex plot structure, which repeatedly undermines the circular genre scheme based on the repetition of the same, with the mediating homodiegetic instance, whose identity oscillates several times between the experiencing and the narrating self. This applies in particular, but by no means exclusively, to the outer margins of the text (prologue and epilogues). On the other hand, the second section deals with the impact of later printing of the text on its narrative structure and the construction of authorship embedded in it. With the help of the multi-layered paratextual apparatus that the editor of the Strasbourg first edition of 1512, the humanist Johannes Adelphus Muling, added to the ›Mörin‹, its authorship is renegotiated and reauthorised externally. The narrating ›I‹ and the real-life author Hermann von Sachsenheim now clearly coincide, while at the same time with the Christian doctrine of marriage Muling imposes an exemplary pattern of interpretation on the text, thus making it available to the widest possible audience beyond the original aristocratic circle of addressees.