Otto von Botenlauben

Otto von Henneberg (* probably 1177 Henneberg; † at Kissingen before 1245 ) is a German minstrel, Crusader and monastic founder and Graf was of Botenlauben ( such as Otto of Botenlauben ) from the noble Henneberg.

• 2.1 Primary texts
• 2.2 secondary literature

Life

Otto was the fourth son of Count Poppo VI. of Henneberg and his wife Sophie, née Countess of Andechs. In the oldest documents ( 1196 and 1197 ) he was still called by his father " Graf von Henneberg ". In 1206 he recorded for the first time as " Count of Botenlauben ", after the castle Botenlauben at Kissingen, whose ruins still stands today.

Crusaders

Otto is first documented in 1197 at the court of the Emperor Henry VI. testified at the Italian campaign he participated. After Otto took the crusade of Henry VI. to the Holy Land and made ​​a career in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, where he rose to reputation and prosperity and no later than 1208 Beatrix von Courtenay, the daughter and heiress of the royal seneschal Joscelin III. , married, from whose law he inherited the " Seigneurie de Joscelin " said rule. In 1220 he sold the rule of the Teutonic Knights, and finally returned to Germany, where he again repeatedly occurred in the following years at the imperial court. Since 1206 he was called usually "Otto von Botenlauben " after the eponymous castle. His two sons, Otto and Henry, as well as his grandson Albert, joined the clergy, so that Otto's line died out without heirs.

Monastery founder

Otto founded in 1231 together with his wife, a Cistercian nun Roth, where both are buried. The monastery was destroyed in the Thirty Years' War; the grave stone, however, is preserved.

Minstrel

Otto is one of the collected in the Codex Manesseplatz minstrels. His oeuvre is narrow: A little more than ten days advertising and songs, and a corpse have survived. His writings are also in the Weingartner Liederhandschrift and ( a poem under the name Niune ) in the Kleine Heidelberg song manuscript and also in the Carmina Burana.

By Otto comes a momentous for the history of literature single stanza from carbuncle:

The 4th line is without a doubt an allusion to the Song of the Nibelungs ( sinking of the Nibelung treasure by Hagen " to Loche in the Rhine "); Otto must therefore have known; and this his poem could be a key for its dating.

The 5th line is an allusion to the orphans mentioned most beautiful and precious [ carbuncle - ] stone ( term for red corundum, especially rubies ) in the imperial crown, probably here - similar to Walther von der Vogelweide - pars is pro toto, ie the whole crown says. With the king, the crown with the " orphans" does not seem generally considered one of the double election - kings of the Staufer period is meant the - at least at the time of the Coronation - was not in possession of the imperial crown. Such [ counter ] kings crown without a kingdom, there were 1198 ( Otto IV - crown in possession of Philip of Swabia), 1208 ( Otto IV sole king, but the crown of Bishop Konrad von Speier on the Trifels kept under wraps ) and 1215 / 1219 ( Friedrich II - Crown owned Otto IV ).