Hero books

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Edition of a book of heroes from 1590

A group of manuscripts and prints from the late Middle Ages from the 14th to the 16th centuries are referred to as hero books . Each book of heroes contains a collection of poems with exclusively or mainly epic content, but the composition of the epics differs between the individual manuscripts and prints. Usually there are one or two poems of Dietrichepik like Laurin and Virginal next to the cyclically connected epics of Ortnit and Wolfdietrich . The Ambras book of heroes , which was commissioned by Maximilian I , is a special case in that it also contains courtly poetry ( Hartmanns von Aue Erec, for example).

The plural hero books is used to denote this type of late medieval collection tradition. The Singular Heldenbuch stands for a handwriting or a print and must be supplemented with a signature or place name for the purpose of precise identification. B. knows which Laurin tradition from which year or century is meant. 'Das Heldenbuch' in the sense of "original", "original" or "real" hero book "does not exist.

Hero book versions

  • The oldest known book of heroes is an elaborate Rhine-Franconian manuscript from the first half of the 14th century with a corner song , virginal, ortnite and Wolfdietrich.
  • More than 100 years later, in 1472, a Kaspar von der Rhön in Nuremberg completed the Dresden Book of Heroes, named after the current place of storage . It contains Ortnit / Wolfdietrich: Eckenlied , Rosengarten , Sigenot , Wunderer , Laurin , Virginal , the younger Hildebrandlied and - added later - Meerwunder and Duke Ernst (both are not heroic epics).
  • The manuscript of Lienhart Scheubel's Heldenbuch was created in Nuremberg in 1480/1490 and includes the virginal , the story of the dwarf king Antelan , Ortnit / Wolfdietrich , the Nibelungenlied and the story of the swan knight Lorengel .
  • The first Strasbourg book of heroes by the goldsmith Diebold von Hanowe , also a manuscript, was written in Strasbourg around 1480. This is the first handbook with a preface that opens the transmission type known as hero book prose and provides an overview of the chronicle and genealogy of the ancient heroes. The preface is followed by Ortnit / Wolfdietrich, Rosengarten, Laurin, Sigenot.
  • The second Strasbourg book of heroes, a manuscript created in 1476, contains Ortnit / Wolfdietrich , Rosengarten , Salman and Morolf and Laurin .
  • The first print of the Heldenbuch, probably produced in 1479 in Johann Prüß the Elder's office with excellent woodcuts, contains Ortnit / Wolfdietrich , Rosengarten , Laurin and Heldenbuch prose. The title is the hero book / that calls the wolfdieterich and thus shows the central position that the Wolfdietrich text occupies in this tradition. Wolfdietrich is shown here as the ancestor of Dietrich von Bern , Berchtung as the ancestor of Hildebrand and the family of the wolves.
  • Further prints were made in
    • Augsburg 1491.
    • Hagenau 1509.
    • Augsburg 1545.
    • Frankfurt am Main 1560.
    • Frankfurt am Main 1590.

19th century hero books

In the 19th century, Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen compiled a complete collection of old German heroic songs from the sagas of Dietrich von Bern and the Nibelungen (Leipzig 1855, 2 vols.).

The "German Heldenbuch" (Berl. 1866–73, 5 vols.) Comes from the students of Karl Müllenhoff .

Karl Simrock has given a comprehensive renewal of the heroic saga under the same title in 6 volumes (Stuttg. Et al. 1843ff.).

These attempts to disseminate the poems collected in the hero books with the same success as the Nibelungenlied, which was popular at the time, failed because of the comparatively poor literary quality. With Simrock, they are probably to be understood from the concern to promote the creation of a German nation-state after the Napoleonic occupation.

literature

  • German book of heroes. After preliminary work by Karl Müllenhof. Weidmann, Hildesheim, ISBN 3-615-17100-4 .
  • Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen (Ed.): Heldenbuch. Old German heroic songs from the sagas of Dietrichs von Bern and the Nibelungen. Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1977. (2 volumes in 1 volume, reprint of the Leipzig 1855 editions)
  • Joachim Heinzle: Introduction to Middle High German Dietrichepik . de Gruyter, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-11-015094-8 .
  • Walter Kofler (ed.): The Dresden heroes book and the fragments of the Berlin-Wolfenbüttel heroes book. Edition and digital facsimile. Hirzel, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-7776-1435-1 . (with CD)
  • Walter Kofler (ed.): Das Straßburger Heldenbuch: Reconstruction of the text version of Diebolt von Hanowe. Kümmerle, Göppingen 1999, ISBN 3-87452-913-4 . (2 volumes)

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