“Æneid,” might occasionally paraphrase the sentiments of French poets. But in the works of Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg, we breathe again the pure German air; and we cannot but regret that these men should have taken the subjects of their poems, with their unpronounceable names, extravagant conceits, and licentious manners, from foreign sources, while they had at home their grand mythology, their heroic traditions, their kings and saints, which would have been more worthy subjects than Tristan and Isold, Schionatulander and Sigune. There were new thoughts stirring in the hearts and minds of those men of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A hundred years before Dante, the German poets had gazed with their eyes wide open into that infinite reality which underlies our short existence on earth. To Wolfram, and to many a poet of his time, the human tragedy of this world presented the same unreal, transitory, and transparent aspect which we find again in Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” Everything points to another world. Beauty, love, virtue, happiness,—everything, in fact, that moves the heart of the poet,—has a hidden reference to something higher than this life; and the highest object of the highest poetry seems to be to transfer the mind to those regions where men feel the presence of a Divine power and a Divine love, and are lost in blissful adoration. The beginning of the thirteenth century is as great an era in the history of German literature as the beginning of the nineteenth. The German mind was completely regenerated. Old words, old thoughts, old metres, old fashions, were swept away, and a new spring dawned over Germany. The various branches of the Teutonic race which, after their inroads into the seats of Roman civilization, had for a time become separated, were beginning to assume a national independence,—when suddenly a new age of migration threatened to set in. The knights of France and Flanders, of England, Lombardy, and Sicily, left their brilliant castles. They marched to the East, carrying along with them the less polished, but equally enthusiastic, nobility of Germany. From the very first the spirit of the Roman towns in Italy and Gaul had exercised a more civilizing influence on the Barbarians who had crossed the Alps and the Rhine, whereas the Germans of Germany proper had been left to their own resources, assisted only by the lessons of the Roman clergy. Now, at the beginning of the Crusades, the various divisions of the German race met again, but they met as strangers; no longer with the impetuosity of Franks and Goths, but with the polished reserve of a Godefroy of Bouillon and the chivalrous bearing of a Frederick Barbarossa. The German Emperors and nobles opened their courts to receive their guests with brilliant hospitality. Their festivals, the splendor and beauty of their tournaments, attracted crowds from great distances, and foremost among them poets and singers.