“wan bî den liuten ist sô guot”

Courtly Literature and Configuring Community at
the Haus zur Kunkel in Fourteenth-Century Konstanz

Community, both functional and dysfunctional, lies at the heart of medieval German courtly literature. The communities of the Nibelungenlied, for example, disintegrate spectacularly and the king of the Huns can only grieve the devastation wrought by the conflict as the poem comes to a close. In contrast to the epic, as we might expect, romance shows itself much more interested in finding harmonious solutions to conflicts that threaten to rend the social fabric. Writing the first Arthurian romance in German, Hartmann von Aue offers a disarmingly simple formulation of community’s importance in Erec, when the eponymous hero speaks to the knight Mabonagrin during the Joie de la court episode. After Erec has won their duel, the defeated Mabonagrin has a chance to tell his story. Erec wonders at Mabonagrin’s rash promise to his lady, swearing to do whatever she desired, which in turn compelled him to withdraw from society to the garden at her subsequent command. How, he wonders, could a knight retreat from the world as Mabonagrin did, because a knight needs a community in order to perform chivalric acts as part of it; one should choose to engage with the world, in Erec’s words, ‘because it is so good to be amongst people’. (‘wan bî den liuten ist sô guot’).1 Erec’s statement reveals one of the key underlying themes that certainly finds varied expression throughout Hartmann’s entire oeuvre, particularly in his Arthurian romances. In fact, one could argue that the question of what it looks like to ‘be among people’ is actually a fundamental theme of German courtly literature as well.

What does it look like to be among people (‘bî den liuten’) and how does one affirm that it is as good as Erec suggests, at least in comparison 160to the kind of disruptive life that Mabonagrin had fallen into? In this essay, I want to consider one particular way in which German literature seems to shape, reflect, and inspire models of community – literally. In its etymology from the Latin con (together) and figurare (to shape), the verb ‘configure’ encapsulates that creative activity: to fashion or shape, to combine or arrange, possibly using a model or pattern to do so.2 In the following, I want to focus on the application of the courtly Arthurian past to shape to communities emerging in new urban settings. I will take a brief look at the model Hartmann provides in Erec provides before turning to Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Grail romance Parzival and the configurations that emerge as subsequent poets or artists interpret and adapt the model. Not only does Wolfram’s narrative itself explore themes of building and maintaining community at several courts that encompass the known world (Grail world, the Arthurian world, the East). The transmission of Parzival in text and image suggests that it was one of the most popular German texts from the early thirteenth century.3 Parzival’s rich history in illustration is accompanied by equally robust scholarship on the relationships between text and image, particularly in illustrated manuscripts. Parzival, like other romances and romance figures, found its way into other media as well, from wall tapestries to murals.4 In his contribution to Heinzle’s recent Wolfram von Eschenbach. 161Ein Handbuch, Schirok offers a concise but comprehensive overview of these various representations from the Braunschweig Gawan tapestry to various mural cycles.

I will focus here on one of these mural cycles, namely the images of Parzival that appear at the Haus zur Kunkel, commonly known as the ‘Distaff House’, in the southern German city of Konstanz. These fourteenth-century murals are some of the earliest images of Parzival that also appear in a much different cultural, social, economic, and architectural environment than the earlier murals of medieval German romance, the ones we find of Hartmann’s Iwein at Rodenegg and Schmalkalden. Indeed, the murals in Konstanz present elements of Wolfram’s Parzival as part of a larger program that uniquely configures older literature and courtly conventions, shaping it and re-imagining it in physical space at the Haus zur Kunkel. I would like first to elucidate the context that sets the tone from Hartmann’s Erec and then apply the foundation it sets to the murals, done more than a century later, both in their immediate architectural setting and in their broader cultural environment. Ultimately, I suggest that the murals articulate the aspirations of an emerging community in Konstanz that sought to find space for courtly models in a fluidly dynamic patrician environment.

From Erec to Parzival: Community as Foundation

It is useful to return to Erec to examine the context in which Hartmann articulates the foundational significance of community in German courtly literature. After their duel, Erec asks the outcast Mabonagrin how he could possibly have occupied his time, living so long apart from 162the rest of the world (9469–72). Furthermore, Erec continues, it would be better for the lady to be among other women after all these years apart (9487–89). And then, Erec expresses what perhaps is Hartmann’s simple yet profound message in this romance:

wie ir mugt belîben,

ein alsô wætlîcher man,

wie mich des niht verwundern kan,

Wan bî den liuten ist sô guot

I cannot cease to wonder

how you could remain, despite this,

so pleasing a man,

for it is so good to be amongst people. (Hartmann Erec; trans. 9487–93)

The challenge of the Joie de la court is the final test for Erec, as he engages in single combat with Mabonagrin whose isolated situation in the garden recalls Erec’s verligen, the activity (or lack thereof) that propelled Erec and Enite on their journey in the first place.5 Mabonagrin’s rash promise to do whatever his lover asked leads to social rupture after they retire to the garden. At Brandigan, Erec finds eighty mourning ladies whose knights have lost challenges to Mabonagrin; the knights are dead and the ladies have remained separated from the rest of society. Mabonagrin’s constant challenge immobilizes the community. The warning is clear. Those who isolate themselves, who go on a path alone, who selfishly keep themselves separate, pull at the social fabric and threaten to tear it. Mabonagrin’s plight allows Erec to show that he has grown through his own trials, that he now understands his responsibility to the community around him and to those who look to him for leadership. Thus, he can bring Mabonagrin back into the courtly fold.6 The locus amoenus of the joie de la court offers hollow beauty, an egocentric anti-community that subverts the social order because it serves no greater good.7

The message of Hartmann’s Erec is unequivocal: being among people is important. In his Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach amplifies and expands Hartmann’s message in an expansive narrative that ranges across the known world. Wolfram reveals multiple communities in conflict and distress, foremost among them the wounded community at Munsalvaesche, for which Parzival provides healing and deliverance, when he returns Anfortas to health.8 Of primary importance to Wolfram is the interrelatedness of the human race, exemplified by the compassion of the question Parzival must ask his uncle: ‘Uncle, what ails you?’ (œheim, waz wirret dier? 795,29) The close relationship of Parzival to Anfortas, like that of Gawan to Arthur – each knight is his respective king’s sister-son – further reinforces the connections and the relationships that will knit a healthy community together. More than a century later, we find this message of community translated onto the walls of a wealthy fourteenth-century residence in the southern German city of Konstanz at the Haus zur Kunkel. Given the popularity of Wolfram’s romance, it comes as no surprise to find scenes from Parzival so prominently. However, as the murals were created at a time of social and cultural transition, I suggest that their inclusion of Parzival reveals the shape of a dynamic community that lives at a discursive intersection where the message succinctly articulated by Erec and compassionately spoken by Parzival – living, acting, being among people (real or imagined) – resonates in a unique visual context.

Parzival at the Haus zur Kunkel:
Community in Transition9

The city of Konstanz is located on the shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee) and belongs to a larger geographic and cultural region that includes Zürich and Basel. By the late thirteenth century, the Bodensee region had become an area of flourishing commerce, textile production and trade. A thriving urban center like its regional neighbors Basel and Zürich, Konstanz experienced an architectural boom in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; indeed, evidence suggests that several hundred buildings were constructed in the city between the middle of the thirteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth century. At that time, Konstanz also became a center of both sacred and secular fresco painting, an art form that had a long tradition in the Bodensee region, particularly in the residences of wealthy patricians.10 Art historians herald the early fourteenth century paintings of the Dominikanerkirche as the rise of Gothic painting in the Bodensee region; this new art form proliferates in wall decorations and murals as well as the manuscript illustrations such as those of the Weingarten Manuscript (Weingartner Liederhandschrift) from Konstanz and the Codex Manesse from Zürich.11 Many painted rooms in late-medieval cities like Basel and Zurich attest growing affluence, comprising mainly representative rooms, gathering spaces, banquet halls. Not surprisingly, a number of strikingly decorated houses survive in Konstanz as well.12

The unassuming Haus zur Kunkel stands near the Münsterplatz at house number 5, possibly painted at the same time as the aforementioned Dominikanerkirche according to Elisabeth von Gleichenstein.13 The patron was probably one of two church canons, possibly Konrad von Überlingen of Bischofszell or Kero von Tübingen of St. Johann, who had owned the house in succession until 1316. Some suggest, most notably Werner Wunderlich and Bernd Schirok, based on dendochronological data, that the house was sold, torn down and rebuilt around this time. Thus, the earliest date for the murals could be 1319/1320.14 A conservative estimate locates the construction of the house in the first third of the fourteenth century, and this remains the general consensus.

At the Haus zur Kunkel, the murals can be found on three floors.15 Two mural cycles were discovered in the nineteenth century, one in the mid 1970’s; the latter is on the ground floor of the entry and displays images of virtues and vices in five medallions. A series of images, or the Love-Slave medallions, dealing with the so-called wiles of women (‘Weiberlisten’), was discovered in the mid-1800’s on the uppermost floor; these were destroyed during late nineteenth century renovations and exist only in a series of pencil reproductions. The middle floor prominently displays two single images: one would seem to recall Samson or David’s fight with the lion, the other an allegory of the five senses. For Saurma-Jeltsch, the royal figure draws upon the iconography of King David, and it also seems to bear a close resemblance to the figure of Heinrich VI from the Weingarten manuscript.16 It is, however, the 166two painted walls on the building´s middle floor that attract the most attention: the north wall with the images of the weavers and the south wall opposite depicting knightly and courtly activities. The unusual murals of the weaving women led to the designation of the building as the Haus zur Kunkel, or ‘the Distaff House’ as the word ‘Kunkel’ is a common term for spindle in the Alemannic region where Konstanz is located.17 While the weavers attracted the most interest, early scholarship did note the courtly character of the images on the south wall; in 1988, Bernd Schirok identified the images as depicting scenes from the first six books of Wolfram’s Parzival. Not only do these scenes offer the only extant mural depictions of Parzival, but they also represent some of the oldest pictorial versions of Wolfram’s Grail romance apart from manuscript illustrations. For this reason, scholars like Wunderlich consider the frescoes in Konstanz to be of ‘rare value’ for art history as for the reception of Wolfram’s Parzival over time.18

The Parzival murals

The Parzival frescoes comprise three panels, just about 60cm high, that represent what appear to be generally sequential scenes from books 3 through 6 of Wolfram’s Parzival. In the first panel, the clearest images are the first and the last, with fragments leading viewers to derive the scenes from the familiar story those scenes seem to represent.19 The story begins at the far left with Parzival’s birth and the last frame on the right seems to depict his encounter with Jeschute. Into the intervening scenes, we must read Parzival’s life in the forest and his departure from his 167mother; perhaps after the encounter with Jeschute, he meets his cousin Sigune, though this cannot be clearly determined, as a number of the images on the wall display significant damage. The first image of the second panel seems to show Parzival putting on the red armor for which he dueled and killed Ither; therefore, the viewer must assume that Ither dies from the first panel to the second. Next, Parzival is welcomed at Arthur’s court, subsequently by Gurnemanz and then by Condwiramurs. Wunderlich assumes that there were additional pictures that originally followed these images, but they no longer exist because of a door that was built later. The third panel begins with Condwiramurs and Parzival together in his sleeping chamber at Pelrapiere, followed by the duel of Parzival and Clamide before the gates of that same city. There seem to be at least a couple of images that depict Parzival leaving Pelrapiere; at least, this is suggested with the depiction of a city tower and several figures meant to represent the inhabitants. Parzival then reaches the Grail castle. And finally there is a scene that Schirok and Wunderlich both agree should show Sigune perched on a limb in the linden tree, where she meets Parzival after he has had to depart the Grail community after his first visit without asking the all-important question.

For Schirok, the illustrated text remains narratively intact and coherent with identifiable scenes from the text, even if the murals bear no indication of names.20 Viewed from left to right, horizontally in each register, the panels seem to offer a chronological narrative; the vertical narrative appears more topical.21 In general, the murals seem to highlight Parzival’s socially unacceptable behavior: the scene with Jeschute visually mirrors the scene of his birth at the opposite end of the line. Each scene shows us a lady reclining on a bed with the young boy close by: Herzeloyde faces to the right in the direction we will read, and the child is a baby held by another female figure; Jeschute faces to the left in the direction we have come, and the older boy at her side is the one who has not grown up enough to know that he should not take anything from a lady without her consent. In the next register, if we follow the story, we know that Parzival can only wear the red armor in the second panel because he has killed Ither to get it. Essentially, we accompany Parzival on a process of maturation as he leaves his mother, 168becomes a young knight, marries and we assume he moves on toward the Grail castle. In other words, we see the results of his poor choices (the encounter with Jeschute or the donning of the red armor); however, Parzival is not shown in the act of making those choices nor are Parzival’s transgressions portrayed in any specific way.

Furthermore, if this is Parzival, we certainly miss the Grail quest that only begins after the scenes here end. Ott sees this as representative of a harmonizing trend (‘Tendenz zur Harmonisierung’) in the interpretation of the original narrative, an evident desire to elide conflict, to brush over societal contradictions.22 Indeed, Parzival is finally the Grail knight who unites both the religious element and the secular. In the end, while Parzival’s quest leads to exile from the courtly world on his search for the Grail, that quest does after all lead to the restoration of the community at Munsalvaesche. Parzival’s exile from the Arthurian court and from Munsalvaesche is temporary and he does return.23 In this way, the figure of Parzival on the walls at the Haus zur Kunkel may communicate the desire to reinforce a certain social-cultural status quo, while hinting at Parzival’s role in God’s divine plan.24 Ächtler sees each of the three registers as a different level of Parzival’s development: naïve youth, courtly education, acceptance into the Arthurian company of the Round Table.25 Any discrepancy in the pictorial sequence with respect to Wolfram’s original clearly shows that the artist’s aim was ‘not so much to 169illustrate the text word for word but still to maintain a clear reference to the narrative’.26 Indeed, this Parzival has also been adapted and adopted into the stories of the patrons.27 An interesting insertion of contemporary heraldic devices and emblems in the third picture of the second panel, for example, seems to connect the patron of the murals with local secular and clerical aristocracy.28 Thus, the murals present a visual narrative that adapts Wolfram’s Parzival into a new story that hints at the possible upwardly bound, potentially socially mobile aspirations of its patrons.

The Weavers

As its name shows, however, the Haus zur Kunkel is best known for the images opposite the Parzival scenes: the murals of the weavers whose work gives the house its name.29 The weavers are in twenty-one square (59x57cm) images that show women active in the production and weaving of linen (images 1–11) and then weaving silk (12–17) and then the last 170row (images 18–21) shows activities that might appropriately be done at the end of the day: a woman reading at prayer, two women combing hair, a woman reclining by a stove. According to Saurma-Jeltsch, it is not surprising that these images recall in form and in concept images found in the Weingarten manuscript, which also originated in Konstanz. These frescos of the weavers are considered the earliest images of work in the trades.30 Like Wunderlich, many scholars interpret them against a historical background of daily life and work, custom and idiom. Of course, one cannot determine how closely the weavers depict the reality of life in the Haus zur Kunkel or how exactly they may reflect actual working conditions in Konstanz – though they certainly show women doing the actual work of weaving.31 Furthermore, as Saurma-Jeltsch points out, the images unmistakably portray noble ladies at ‘work’ in their garments of costly reds and greens, with their head coverings and jewelry, wearing their fine shoes. These women could be the visual sisters of the ladies we find in the Manesse manuscript.32 We find a complement to the aristocratic overtones of these images in the written text that frames each individual square, describing each activity. Image 10 shows two figures: a woman at the loom and a child, kneeling by the loom winding the loose yarn around the shuttle. The text reads: DAS KIND SPVLET ICH KA WEBE (‘The child spools, I can weave’).33 The text explains what we see as the image shows us how the work is done from preparing and carding the raw material to spinning and spooling the yarn, from cutting the cloth to sewing purses and belts, from the daily prayer that should accompany work to the well-earned restorative bath when tasks are done. In this way, the murals at the Haus zur Kunkel follow the custom of combining both text and image with inscriptions, as we see in a number of other examples such as the horizontal bands that separate the rows of images in the tapestry known as Wienhausen I. The Wienhausen tapestries date from the first half of the fourteenth century and are thus roughly contemporary with the murals at the Haus zur Kunkel.34 The explicit combination of text and image suggests that, whether the recipients were readers or whether 171they were merely acquainted with the texts depicted on the walls before them, they are expected to have a framework into which to place the visual text. This would hold for both the weavers, where there is literally text to be read, and Parzival, where the text must be read exclusively through its images. In either case, the combination of text and image ensures that the perspective of the viewer remains a doubled one.35

The Program

Several painters were at work over a period of time to produce this surfeit of images; in fact, some see at least three distinct painters at work throughout the house. Von Gleichenstein, for example, sees a ‘weaker hand’ at work in the Parzival frescoes in comparison with the weavers; this is how she explains that the figures of the weavers recall the style of the Weingarten manuscript, while the medallions of virtues and vices display a lively elegance in their gestures that recall the Manesse illuminations.36 Nonetheless, while the weavers and the Parzival mural may not perhaps have been done by the same painter, their form and structure suggest to Ächtler that they were intended to be ‘read’ together.37 In addition, most recent studies seems to agree that the patrons would have taken the older murals into consideration with each addition such that any program could have remained at least consistent.38 They are also located opposite one another, even though in the nineteenth century a wall would have divided this room into two separate chamber, according to Wunderlich. That wall is now no longer there. For that reason, both series of images (those from Parzival and the weavers) occupy the same space, enabling modern viewers to juxtapose the two murals and consider them together as part of a related program.

Wunderlich suggests that we could see the weavers and the courtly women as reciprocal images, demonstrating appropriate models of 172femininity. On the one hand, we have ‘the female type of the diligent, dexterous and pious woman from an urban world’ who is then to be compared with famous female figures from a celebrated and popular epic tale who embody love and fidelity, beauty and courtly manners’.39 The patron and the residents of the ‘Distaff-House’ would have seen would thus have used the various murals as a mechanism for self-affirmation. The mural images would illustrate ‘not only individual but also collective views of the world, and values in the world’. The images offer a spectrum of attitudes and activities – ‘bourgeois work, knightly customs and religious morality’ – that can serve both the clergy and others to demonstrate and reinforce behavioral norms.40 On the other hand, the murals may be differently complementary, for the weavers do not portray women at work to earn a living. Rather they are involved in a virtuous occupation that demonstrates diligence as opposed to laziness. As noted earlier, if one considers their dress and their posture, the weaving women are placed equal in status with those noble women depicted in the Manesse or Weingarten manuscripts.41 Thus, the weavers connect the act of weaving and the act of writing, drawing on well-known metaphors, and the murals elevate both activities to the same level.42 In this sense, one could perhaps consider these images together in relation to a more traditional didactic ‘canon’ which may promote both classical and Christian ideals of the active and the contemplative life.43 This might take the frescoes of the house as a whole into account – the murals may function thus as a visual book of virtues, as it were, or a conduct manual ‘written’ in metaphors that were perhaps standard currency for the time and the place (particularly Konstanz). Ächtler also sees a potential need on the part of the church to appropriate secular images for theological purposes, especially since the murals were likely commissioned by a clerical patron.44 This visual manual demands a discerning reader, able to participate in a version of what art historian E.H. Gombrich calls the ‘beholder’s share’: what we read into images can depend on our ability to ‘recognize in them things or images we 173find stored in our minds.’45 The courtly framework outlines the norms, aspirations and values of a society that admires the heroes of the past in its attempt to accommodate the rapidly changing present.

Conclusion:
Courtly Literature and the Contours
of Urban Identity

The murals at the Haus zur Kunkel, particularly the weavers and the scenes from Parzival, invest fourteenth century images with the allusive authority of past courtly communities for a new present. Weavers – or figures who engage in weaving – have made appearance in courtly literature, for example. In the juxtaposition of the courtly world of Parzival and the weavers, one may also find a resonance of Hartmann’s Iwein as well. Like Erec, Iwein must repair broken relationships and sundered communities. This this is most evident when he comes upon the workhouse where three hundred women are imprisoned.46 The women are engaged in the kind of activities we see depicted at the Haus zur Kunkel: they weave, they embroider, and they sew. Those who cannot weave or embroider do other tasks: they sort and wind thread, they beat the flax or scrape or comb it, they spin. As the women later tell Iwein, they are a tribute paid to the lord of the castle. They work their hands to the bone, as it were, in stark contrast to the lord of the castle who sits with his wife in a beautiful and comfortable chamber listening to their accomplished young daughter read aloud. As is the case in the garden of Brandigan, the separation here is inappropriate: women should not remain isolated from men, groups should not be isolated from other social peers, work should not be exploited, because otherwise the whole cannot function properly.

In fourteenth-century Konstanz, the message may be that the values are the same though the world has changed. The weavers and the noblewomen now share the same space, literally and figuratively. On the one hand, the murals at the Haus zur Kunkel show how much the religious community enjoyed courtly literature and culture. The wealthy patricians, the new up-and-coming social classes, did as well; however, they required a new visual vocabulary to represent themselves and thus adapted the courtly lexicon to write themselves into new narratives. As Nina Rowe has recently shown, the urban laity in particular did the same in illuminated World Chronicle manuscripts, where they ‘claim center stage and aim high, telling the legends of the past in their own words’ and celebrate their own progress in the process. 47 Wunderlich suggests that the Parzival sequences in combinations with the weavers served to elevate the role of women in the lives of the men around them; the murals depict women as mother (Herzeloyde), object of misguided love service (Jeschute), queen (Guinevere), wife (Condwiramurs), priestess (Sigune) – and as skilled, industrious, and pious craftswomen (Weavers). Parzival, suggests Wunderlich, proves his nobility and his masculinity (‘männliche Würde’) through his various interactions with these women.48 One might imagine that the male clerics who resided in this house could perhaps have felt similarly validated by these images from the secular world. They could depict the positive attributes of a world whose values they might want to emulate while simultaneously preserving their space apart – and relegating potentially wily women to the painting on the wall.

The murals at the Haus zur Kunkel thereby infuse an urban patrician environment with the courtly attributes desired by patrons who could thereby ennoble themselves, in deed and in image if not in name or in title. Muriel Whitaker comments generally about the ‘richly decorated 175consumer goods’ that show rising affluence in Gothic Europe between thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.49 Many of these goods featured courtly motifs. At this time, we also see the rising affluence reflected in the proliferation of courtly motifs and narratives on walls, whether as murals such as the Parzival murals in the homes of wealthy patricians from Lübeck to Konstanz and Zürich or as sumptuous tapestries in religious houses (Wienhausen or Braunschweig). Secular wall paintings also decorated rooms in wealthy Jewish homes in the fourteenth century, as Shatzmiller reveals in his study of ‘The Decorated Home of the Rabbi of Zurich’.50 This affluence is also evident in the wall paintings and frescoes we find in the urban homes around the Bodensee region as well. 51 Urban image cycles seem eclectic in their choice of images. They draw from religious imagery, as Walz shows in the correlations between images in the Konstanz Dominikanerkirche and various residences.52 As they sought familiar images from religious narratives, fourteenth-century patrons continued to draw on a well of imagery from familiar courtly narratives as well, though the murals in residences (non-ecclesiastical settings) may seem not as complex.53 Meckseper sees here the tendency in city homes to prefer single images (like the medallions or the image of King David in the Haus zur Kunkel) that can be seen as perhaps complete in themselves. Images in city homes have a more static and symbolic function, for Meckseper, as opposed to the more dynamic narrative one might encounter in the older fortresses in less populated areas. Nevertheless, the adaptations we find on the walls of the Distaff House show us tantalizing dislocations of ‘preexisting story material’ 176similar to other fourteenth-century images of Iwein in the Freiburg Malter tapestry, on a French ivory casket, or the scenes from Tristan on an elegant embroidered slipper.54 In this, the Haus zur Kunkel represents a model of multifunctionality inasmuch as the images were designed for changing recipients (‘wechselnde Rezipienten’).55 The Parzival in Konstanz, like Iwein and Gawain and Tristan elsewhere, has become part of another narrative, related but different. We find a similar effect in the murals (from around 1400) at the Italian castle of Runkelstein, located outside of Bozen (Bolzano), not all that far from Rodenegg.56

As we look at them now, the murals demonstrate an intersection of courtly culture and literature that still issues an invitation to conversation. We may never know how the inhabitants of these homes lived with their beautifully decorated walls or what they thought of them. Indeed, the murals at Rodenegg or Schmalkalden or Konstanz, to say nothing of Lübeck and Zürich, were uncovered comparatively recently, between the mid to late nineteenth century and the latter half of the twentieth century. The murals remain tantalizing fragments on several levels. The murals display fragmentary episodes, graphically spliced together, of the narratives they represent. In addition, the paintings themselves only survive into the present as physical fragments, whose sometimes poor further obscures their narratives. Finally, as the murals clearly select from and adapt the literary traditions of the courtly past, they expose the cultural fragments with which patrons wished to surround themselves: the virtues, the ideals, and the models that they still employed to shape 177the contours of their communities. In the murals of later medieval urban residences, for instance, we read the potential for tension among groups such as the landed hereditary aristocracy and those wealthy patricians who claimed to be their equals.57 The ability to paint themselves through their insignia into Parzival’s adventures might have proved easier to achieve than equal status in reality, and perhaps just as affirming, to the patrons at the Haus zur Kunkel. The combination of fragments at the Haus zur Kunkel reveals a society on the threshold of change; they allow us a glimpse into a community configuring itself anew, drawing upon older literary or allegorical models (implicitly or explicitly) to navigate among its intersecting cultures (the clerical, the courtly, the literary, the secular, the religious, the patrician, the aristocratic) in the uniquely multivalent and polyvocal environment of mid-fourteenth century Konstanz. Regardless of how later audiences re-configure their – and our – literary models to shape new encounters, we might still agree now (as then) that it is good to imagine ourselves among those people—now, as then, we are perhaps better for it.

Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

Appalachian State University

hellenbranda@appstate.edu