Lohengrin

Lohengrin, the knight of the swan, hero of German versions of a legend widely known in variant forms from the European Middle Ages onward. It seems to bear some relation to the northern European folktale of “The Seven Swans,” but its actual origin is uncertain. The basic story tells of a mysterious knight who arrives—in a boat drawn by a swan—to help a noble lady in distress. He marries her but forbids her to ask his origin; she later forgets this promise, and he leaves her, never to return.

The first German version of this old legend—which itself probably derives from a fairy tale of seven brothers who are persecuted by a wicked grandmother and then metamorphosed into swans—appeared in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (c. 1210), a poem chiefly concerned with the theme of the Holy Grail. In this account the swan knight’s name was Loherangrîn, and he was the son of Parzival (Perceval), the Grail hero, and heir to Parzival’s title; he arrived in a swan-drawn boat from the castle of the Grail to aid Elsa of Brabant, married her, and in the end returned to the Grail castle.

An anonymous Middle High German poem, Lohengrin (c. 1275–90), set the story in the historical context of the reign of the German king Henry I the Fowler (876?–936), and its author elaborated the realistic elements of the story at the expense of much romantic material. A contemporary poem known as the Wartburgkrieg presented the story of Lohengrin as an entry in a story-telling competition; it was the contribution of von Eschenbach, who recited it in the famous singers’ contest held at Wartburg (a castle overlooking the town of Eisenach) by the landgrave of Thuringia, Hermann I (c. 1156–1217). Other German medieval versions of the story include Konrad von Würzburg’s Schwanritter (“Swan Knight”) and an anonymous 15th-century epic called Lorengel. The latter was the chief source used by the 19th-century composer and librettist Richard Wagner for his opera Lohengrin (first performed on Aug. 28, 1850, at Weimar, Ger.).

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In a French version of the legend, the Chevalier au cygne, the knight of the swan (here called Helyas) married Beatrix of Bouillon, the story being arranged and elaborated to glorify the house of Bouillon. Godfrey of Bouillon, a leader of the First Crusade, was held to be the son of a mysterious swan knight. English versions of the legend, composed in the late 14th and early 16th centuries, were strongly influenced by this French account.

Through its alignment with a historical period and its integration with the Wartburg story, the Lohengrin legend became part of German popular tradition. In particular, the legend came to be associated with the town of Cleves (modern Kleve, Ger.), the rulers of which took the swan as their crest; the swan tower of the castle, as well as a statue of the knight and his swan, perpetuate the legend’s memory there.