Editing Freidank (section)

==Life==
Nothing about Freidank's life is known with certainty, such hypotheses as there are based on the language and content of his work ''Bescheidenheit''.
He would have been born in the later 12th century, and was likely of [[Duchy of Swabia|Swabia]]n origin.

''Freidank'' (''Vrîdanc'', ''Vrîgedanc'')  literally translates to "free thought"; passages in Freidank's poetry allude to the freedom of thought, and  the name may be an assumed epithet,<ref>Grimm, ''Vridankes Bescheidenheit'' (1834), [https://books.google.com/books?id=XIE6AAAAcAAJ&pg=PR40 40f.]</ref>  although ''Freidank'' (''Fridanc, Fridangus'') is also recorded as a German family name in the later medieval period; one ''Bernhard Freidank'' is mentioned in Helbling's ''[[Lucidarius]]'' (but it has been argued that this may in fact be a reference to the poet himself.<ref>
Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen, ''Germania'', Volume 4 (1841), [https://books.google.com/books?id=nQZJAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA194  194&ndash;210].</ref>).
[[Wilhelm Grimm]] (1834) argued that the author is ''Vrîdanc'' is a pseudonym and that the author of ''Bescheidenheit'' is [[Walter von der Vogelweide]]. This hypothesis was immediately rejected by the majority of scholars; according to [[Karl Bartsch|Bartsch]] (1878), the only German philologist convinced by Grimm's idea was [[Wilhelm Wackernagel|Wackernagel]].<ref>Karl Bartsch, [https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/ADB:Freidank "Freidank"]  in: ''[[Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie]]'' vol. 7 (1878), 336–338.</ref>

Based on the contents of ''Bescheidenheit'',  its author was educated in writing and proper speech, and it is likely that he was a cleric by education.
It seems likely that in 1228–1229 he was involved in the [[Sixth Crusade]] of the [[House of Hohenstaufen|Hohenstaufen]] emperor [[Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor|Frederick II]], as the section about [[Acre, Israel|Acre]] seems to refer to this period.<ref>no. 46 in the [https://books.google.com/books?id=QHgHAAAAQAAJ&dq=freidank+bescheidenheit+von+akers&pg=PA154 W. Grimm edition]; P. 157 line 9 (''Der bû den man ze Jaffe tuot'') refers to the fortifications of [[Jaffa]] built by [[Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor|Frederick II]] in 1228/29.</ref>

Freidank may have died in 1233, if he was the ''magister Fridancus'' whose death was reported in the annals of the [[Cistercian]] monastery at [[Kaisheim Abbey|Kaisheim]]. 
The chronicler [[Hartmann Schedel]] claimed to have seen a monument with Freidank's epitaph in Venetian [[Treviso]] in 1465. Gion (1870) argued that the Freidank buried in Treviso died in the 1380s and is not to be confused with the author of the ''Bescheidenheit''.<ref>J. Guion, ''Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie'' (ZfdPh) 2 (1870), 172ff., cited after Bezzenberger (1872) p. 21.</ref>