page_title: Tannhäuser
section_title: Tannhäuser legend
hierarchical_section_title: Tannhäuser / Tannhäuser legend
context_page_description: Tannhäuser was a German Minnesinger and poet. Historically, his biography is obscure beyond the poetry, which dates between 1245 and 1265.
  His name becomes associated with a "fairy queen"-type folk ballad in German folklore of the 16th century.
context_section_description: Based on his Bußlied, Tannhäuser became the subject of a legendary account. It makes Tannhäuser a knight and poet who found the Venusberg, the subterranean home of Venus, and spent a year there worshipping the goddess. After leaving the Venusberg, Tannhäuser is filled with remorse, and travels to Rome to ask Pope Urban IV (reigned 1261–1264) if it is possible to be absolved of his sins. Urban replies that forgiveness is impossible, as much as it would be for his papal staff to blossom. Three days after Tannhäuser's departure, Urban's staff bloomed with flowers; messengers are sent to retrieve the knight, but he has already returned to Venusberg, never to be seen again.
  The Venusberg legend has been interpreted in terms of a Christianised version of the well-known folk-tale type of a mortal visiting the Otherworld: A human being seduced by an elf or fairy experiences the delights of the enchanted realm but later the longing for his earthly home is overwhelming. His desire is granted, but he is not happy (often noting that many years have passed in the world during his absence) and in the end returns to fairy-land. 
  The Venusberg legend has no counterpart in Middle High German literature associated with Tannhäuser. 
  Venusberg as a name of the "Otherworld" is first mentioned in German in Formicarius by Johannes Nider (1437/38) in the context of the rising interest in witchcraft at the time.
  The earliest version of the narrative of the Tannhäuser legend, as yet without association with the figure of Tannhäuser, and naming a "Sibylla" instead of Venus as the queen in the mountain, is  recorded  in the form of a ballad by the Provencal writer Antoine de la Sale, part of the compilation known as La Salade (c. 1440). 
  The association of the narrative of La Sale's ballad, which was likely based on an Italian original, with the name of Tannhäuser, appears to take place in the early 16th century.
  A German Tannhäuser folk ballad is recorded in numerous versions beginning around 1510, 
  both in High German and Low German variants. Folkloristic versions were still collected from oral tradition in the early-to-mid 20th century, especially in the Alpine region (a Styrian variant with the name Waldhauser was collected in 1924). Early written transmission around the 1520s was by the means of printed single sheets 
  popular at the time, with examples known from Augsburg, Leipzig, Straubing, Vienna, and Wolfenbüttel
  The earliest extant version is from Jörg Dürnhofers Liederbuch, printed by Gutknecht of Nuremberg in ca. 1515. The popularity of the ballad continues unabated well into the 17th century. Versions are recorded by Heinrich Kornmann (1614), Johannes Preatorius (1668).
caption: In the Venusberg by John Collier, 1901: a gilded setting that is distinctly Italian quattrocento.
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