Contests of Wartburg (The)

sometimes called The Battles of the Minstrels. An annual contest held in Wartburg, in Saxe Weimar, for a prize given by Hermann, Margrave of Thuringia, for the best poem. About 150 specimens of these poems are still extant, by far the best being those of Walter of Vogelweide, in Thuringia (1168–1230).

⁂ The poem called The Contest of Wartburg is by Wolfram, a minnesinger. It records the contest of the two great German schools of poetry in the thirteenth century—the Thuringian and the Suabian. Henry of Vogel-weide and Henry of Ofterdingen represent the two schools.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.