Sueskint von Trimberg

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Süßkind von Trimberg (or Susskind of Trimberg) (c. 1230 – c. 1300) was a German minnesinger, and, in all probability, the first documented Jewish poet of the German language. He is called a Jew three times in the manuscript (which was completed around 1330) and is painted with a Judenhut (the hat Jews were forced to wear by law in the latter Middle Ages). Besides that, the name “Süßkind” was then exclusive to Jews, and the orthography and language of his poems correspond to the area he is supposed to have come from. His poems are generally assumed to have been written between 1250 and 1300. Süßkind is named after his probable birthplace Trimberg, a town with a castle of the same name, now a part of the Elfershausen, in Bad Kissingen district, Franconia, near Würzburg. All that is really known about him are his six poems (about 200 lines) in the Codex Manesse (now at Heidelberg), and the accompanying picture, which show that he took high rank among the poets of his time. Everything else - assumptions that he might have been a physician, might have lived at the court of the bishop of Würzburg or Frankfurt - are pure speculation from later times, usually based on the interpretation of his picture in the codex, which shows him before a bishop or a bishop's representative with a bishop's staff, but without his mitre, seated on a throne, under a flag which is variously said to be the flag of the town of Constance (whose bishop was closely associated with the codex), of Fulda (near

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