Hero's book prose

Heldenbuch prose is the name given to the comprehensive prose representation of the age of the heroes , which in the five prints of the hero books is added to the various heroic epics as a final section and is prefaced as a preface in the handwriting of Diebold von Hanowe.

In the first print, the text was just under 11 pages. It begins with King Orendel of Trier as the first hero and ends with the departure of the last hero, Dietrich von Bern after a mighty battle in front of Bern ( Verona ). The story of the individual heroes is told, partly in the form of catalogs of names, partly as a narrative. The kinship relationships between the heroes are listed, which are assigned to the three regions of origin and activity: the Rhineland around Cologne and Aachen, the Hungarian Huns and the Burgundy around Worms. The focus is on the history of Dietrich von Bern. In some important details, this is not told as usual (e.g. in the Nibelungenlied ), but as in the Thidrek saga . For example, Kriemhild is not killed by Hildebrand, but by Dietrich. Since the author of the hero book prose could not have known the Thidrek saga, this is an indication that there must have been an older tradition from which both - the Thidrek saga narrator and hero prose writer - took these peculiarities.

Another special feature is the use of biblical concepts and formulations that are otherwise unusual in heroic poetry. The entire hero story appears as part of the divine history of salvation. At the same time, especially in the genealogical-geographical overviews, a dry reporting tone is maintained, as was customary in contemporary historiography. The state of society is explained from the heroic days: all lords and nobles descended from the giants or heroes and a hero was never a peasant.

literature

• Joachim Heinzle: Introduction to Middle High German Dietrichepik . Berlin: de Gruyter 1999. ISBN 3-11-015094-8 (especially p. 46ff.)