THE STYRIAN NOBLEMAN Ulrich von Liechtenstein (ca. 1200/ 1210-January 26, 1275) played an important role in the politics of his country, and at the same time he composed love songs, an autobiographical romance, and a treatise about love. The words of his love songs, but unfortunately not the melodies, have been transmitted in the most prestigious collection of Middle High German Lyrics, the Codex Manesse. Included is a painting (Miniatur) depicting Ulrich in the ambiguous role of the goddess Venus, a female “Knight of Love.” The songs are also transmitted in his romance Frauendienst (Service of the Ladies), which is preserved in a single manuscript. The Frauenbuch (Book about Ladies), a treatise about love, is known only by means of a late, but important manuscript of the early sixteenth century, the Ambraser Heldenbuch, which was commissioned by King Maximilian I and written by Hans Ried, secretary at Bozen in South Tyrol from 1504 to 1516.

Ulrich was not only a famous German-speaking poet of the thirteenth century, but also one of the most important politicians of his time in the dukedom of Styria, which maintained contacts with medieval Austria and Carinthia. The sovereigns of Styria were the Babenberger Duke Leopold VI (1195–1230) and subsequently Friedrich II (1230–46), the last duke of the Babenberg dynasty, whose death in the battle on the Leitha River against Hungary is described by Ulrich at the end of his Frauendienst.