1 - The Kaiserchronik: The Emergence of Charlemagne in Chronicle Literature

Summary

THE TOPIC of Charlemagne as seen through the lens of medieval German literature opens interesting interpretative perspectives, in that we are made very aware of how thin the wall between a literary and a historical approach to our subject matter can be. Both poets and chroniclers demonstrated an interest in this Carolingian ruler who has exerted such an influence long after his death, serving as a mythical figure and commonly representing the ideal royal character, a harbinger of justice and peace, the triumphant successor to the Roman world dating back at least to the time of Julius Caesar and Augustine. In fact, the difference between a chronicler and a poet in the Middle Ages was not as strict as we might imagine today, and by the same token the difference between the historical and fictional texts they produced is negligible.

As is reflected in many works of art and poetry, Charlemagne has been a huge presence in people's minds both during his lifetime and ever since. He was, almost from the beginning, something of a mythical figure. The question here is not whether he was known or not – we can safely assume that he was, at least by all those who enjoyed at least a modicum of education in the Middle Ages – but rather how Charlemagne was perceived, what expectations a reference to him might have provoked, and how individual writers modified the image of that emperor for their own purposes or for those of their audiences.

The Kaiserchronik, a twelfth-century rhymed verse chronicle (possibly from as early as 1130) was composed by an anonymous Regensburg cleric (or possibly two clerics), and first attracted the attention of modern scholars and editors when the publication of one manuscript in the Scriptores rerum Boicarum was announced in 1765, which never happened, however. In 1783 a fragmentary manuscript appeared in print, followed by the publication of other fragments in 1803 and 1807. A first consolidated edition was printed by Joseph Diemer in 1849, and another by Hans Ferdinand Maßmann in 1854, but continuous research over the following decades was necessary before the full text was finally prepared and presented in 1892 in a critical edition by Edward Schröder.