Heldenbuch

Heldenbücher (singular Heldenbuch "book of heroes") is the conventional title under which a group of manuscripts and prints of the 15th and 16th centuries has come down to us. Each Heldenbuch contains a collection of primarily German epic poetry, typically including material from the Theodoric cycle, and the cycle of Hugdietrich, Wolfdietrich and Ortnit. The Heldenbuch texts are thus based on medieval German literature, but adapted to the tastes of the Renaissance, remodelled in rough Knittelvers or doggerel.

The Heldenbücher group was edited in 19th-century German scholarship, by Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen (Leipzig 1855, 2 vols.), Müllenhoff (Berlin 1866-73, 5 vols.), Simrock (Stuttgart 1843-49, 6 vols.) and A. von Keller (Stuttgart, 1867).

A fragmentary manuscript of the first half of the 14th century, containing Eckenlied, Virginal, Ortnit and Wolfdietrich, may be considered a predecessor or the earliest member of this group. Apart from this, the oldest Heldenbuch is a manuscript dated 1472, the so-called Dresdner Heldenbuch, containing Ortnit/Wolfdietrich, Eckenlied, Rosengarten zu Worms, Sigenot, Wunderer, Laurin, Virginal, the Younger Lay of Hildebrand, with Meerwunder and Herzog Ernst added in a later hand. A manuscript of the 1480s contains, Virginal, the tale of Antelan, Ortnit/Wolfdietrich, Nibelungenlied and Lorengel. There are two Heldenbuch manuscripts of Strasbourg, written between 1476 and 1480.

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