HEINRICH VON MORUNGEN

died 1222, near Leipzig German minnesinger, one of the few notable courtly poets from east-central Germany. A native of Thuringia, he spent much of his later life in the service of Duke Dietrich of Meissen. His poems, of which some 33 are to be found in the Heidelberg manuscript, are all devoted to the fashionable cult of love. His poems show more originality and spontaneity than those of his contemporaries because of his vivid imagination and the intensity of his emotion. As a result his poems appeal to the modern reader more than those of any other minnesinger with the exception of Walther von der Vogelweide.