Frauenkatalog 1200, in zehn Bildern

Ginover instead of Arthur, Jeschute instead of Parzival: We finally get to know them, the women of the Middle High German romances around 1200, not as mere accessories, not as side characters – the women play the leading roles, and Rolf Vollmann introduces them to us. With narrative ease, Rolf Vollmann immerses us in the legendary worlds of Arthur and company, inserting himself among the protagonists, commenting on the events, and bringing the Middle Ages to life: For there too, there was drinking – but above all, there was desire, love, and intrigue. Parzival and Arthur, Willehalm and Lancelot – almost everyone knows these heroes and main figures of medieval legends. However, knowledge of the great women, who did not simply stand by their side, is less widespread: Ginover (or Guinevere) may still be mentioned alongside Arthur and Lancelot, but Jeschute and Sigune from Wolfram's Parzival are familiar to only a few. Rolf Vollmann shakes up these Middle High German gender relations: Women are the centers of the famous stories. There is the young Lavinia, who is passionately interested in Aeneas, even though her mother would rather see her dead for it; Queen Ginover, along with her husband Arthur and lover Lancelot; the young sailor Sigune, a woman from the Grail kin, who sits with her dead lover in her arms in a linden tree, a relative of Parzival; the beautiful Enite, who must motivate her husband, who has become lazy since marrying her, in Hartmann von Aue’s tale; the lovely Jeschute, over whom the very young Parzival stumbles in his clumsiness after leaving his widowed mother Herzeloyde, leading her husband to let the innocent woman ride naked through the land. Bold, headstrong, sometimes merciless, always beautiful – this is how Vollmann presents the female characters of the medieval romance. Unlike Eschenbach, Hartmann von Aue, and all the other anonymous authors, who...