Euphemia, Queen of Norway 1280 – 1312 are credited with a huge cultural influence upon Norway and Sweden. Some of this inspiration was undoubtedly brought from her home in Rügen, where her older brother was a famous troubadour.
Originally Wizlaw III (1265 -1325) was not destined to govern the small principality of Rügen in Northern Germany after their father. Shortly after he died in 1302 in Oslo, their brother Sambor died too and Wizlaw had to take over.
His was a complicated political landscape. Warring and feuding between the diverse princes, kings and Hanseatic cities along the Northern coast of Germany was widespread and financing this was in the best of times a challenge. As the years 1316 – 1322 were marked by a widespread and totally devastating climatic crisis – summers filled with torrents of rain and cold, long winters – hunger and escalating prices contributed to the enormous threats posed by his enemies in the rest of Pomerania. In a sense it all ended badly. Wizlaw had to pawn and pledge huge tracts of land to rich burghers who saw splendid opportunities to escalate their holdings in the countryside. The historian William Chester Jordan, has estimated that the prince most of his land during the years 1316 – 17, never to be redeemed. In 1325 his son died and soon after he followed. With ho heirs Rügen was taken over by his heir, the Pomeranian duke.
In spite of his lack of financial acumen, Wizlaw is nevertheless remembered. He was simply one of the leading German figures in the literary and cultural tradition highlighted by the romantic traditions of the troubadours or in German “Minnesänger”. Wizlaw’s compositions, 27 in all, were written in Platdeutsch (a German dialect), which was lingua franca around the Baltic at that time. Most of his songs are however preserved in the “Jenaer Lieder handschrift” in high German. In the manuscript there are notes preserved and it is highly likely that he worked as a composer as well as poet.
He was renowned in his time and probably performed his own songs at some of the large gatherings at that time. The songs cn be divided into two genres – the so- called “Sprüche” and the songs. The first category had a moralistic tone and two of them even deplored the hunger and despair of the times – maybe allusions to the catastrophe in the years 1316 – 22. The songs had as usual themes like the pleasures of life, spring, courtly love and beauty.
Read more:
The songs of the minnesinger, Prince Wizlaw of Rügen: with modern transcriptions of his melodies and English translations of his verse. Wesley Thomas and Barbara Garvey Jackson
University of North Carolina Press, 1967.
The great Famine. Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century.
William Chester Jordan Princeton University Press 1996.