Goldemar

Goldemar is a fragmentary thirteenth-century Middle High German poem by Albrecht von Kemenaten about the legendary hero Dietrich von Bern, the legendary counterpart of the historical Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great. It is one of the so-called fantastical (aventiurehaft) Dietrich poems, so called because it more closely resembles a courtly romance than a heroic epic.

The poem concerns Dietrich's fight with the dwarf king Goldemar after he sees the dwarf absconding with a princess. It is the only poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic poetry with a named author that is accepted as genuine.

Only the first nine stanzas of the Goldemar have survived. They tell that Dietrich once set off into the forest to defeat the giants who live in Trutmunt forest. While on this quest, he comes across a mountain where dwarfs make their home. He notices that the dwarfs have a girl with them, and immediately falls in love. The dwarfs attempt to hide the girl, and their king, Goldemar, responds when Dietrich asks them about her. The text breaks off in the middle of his speech.

From the Heldenbuch-Prosa we know that the girl's name is Herlin, a princess from Portugal. King Goldemar had abducted her after her father was slain by heathens, but the girl had resisted Goldemar's attempts to sleep with her. Dietrich then rescued and married her. From the late medieval romance Reinfrid von Braunschweig we also know that Dietrich had to defeat various giants who were at Goldemar's command. In the process, Dietrich and his companions destroyed the Trutmunt forest and the dwarfs' mountain.

The Goldemar is transmitted in a single paper manuscript dating from the middle of the fourteenth-century (c. 1355-1357). Only eight leaves survive, on which, besides the Goldemar, medical recipes, a Latin-German glossary of the names of herbs, and a second Dietrich poem, the Virginal are found. The manuscript is found today in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (Hs. 80).

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