This public klecture is held in the framework of the Faculty Research Seminar.
On November 3, 1551 the multi-ethnic imperial army including Spaniards, Italians, Bohemians and Germans (Landsknechte) joined forces with Hungarians, Saxons, and Romanians and besieged Ottoman troops holding the fortress of Lippa (Lipova, Romania) and regained it in 3 weeks. Two songs written contemporaneously describe the battle. Two poets — Sebastian Tinódi, writing in Hungarian, and Paul Speltacher writing in German— had first hand information about the siege and based their respective accounts on the essential facts, thus giving us a unique window on the Hungarian and German perception of their mission and the battle they fought together. However, to the extent that the poets represent two languages and two cultural views, they express very different perspectives regarding motivations, goals and loyalties of the commanders and the several companies of troops.
The lecture analyses each poet’s own expectations and dissatisfactions that imply ethnic conflict and divergent loyalties. Since each poet has the ambition to compose an authoritative record that will convince his audiences, my evaluation of these two accounts elucidates the way they accomplish that goal. She shows that each poet selectively colors and embellishes the facts so that they best convey his own interpretation and justify his own “truth.” Thus the divergent perspectives of the two poets reveal a complex power struggle among all three powers that questions an attempt to define religious, ethnic or “national” identity in the region.
The lecture includes a musical sample of the poems.
Maria Dobozy is professor of German and Medieval Studies and has been teaching at the University of Utah since 1986 and taught as Recurrent Visiting Professor in the Dept. of Medieval Studies at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary from 1995-2006. She has served as book review editor for Speculum (German, Dutch and Scandinavian). In 2004 she received a grant from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to work on Sebastian Tinódi, whose life and poems are her current monograph project. She has published on a variety of topics in medieval culture and literature including medieval law, world chronicles, Hugh of St. Victor, moral conduct, 13th century German romances, and Thomas Mann’s version of the Gregorius story Der Erwählte. Her books include: Full Circle: Kingship in the German Epic. "Alexanderlied, Rolandslied, 'Spielmannsepen.'" Göppingen: Kümmerle 1985; The Saxon Mirror. A Sachsenspiegel of the Fourteenth Century (includes Introduction, Translation, Glossary and Commentary to Eike von Repgow's “Sachsenspiegel”). Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press,1999; and Re-Membering the Present: The Medieval German Minstrel in Cultural Context. (Disputatio, 6), Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005. Currently she is completing an edition of the Wolfenbuttel Sachsenspiegel text.
