Heldenbuch

As a hero books a group of manuscripts and prints of the late Middle Ages to the 14th is referred to the 16th century. Each hero book contains a collection of seals with exclusively or predominantly heroic epic content, but differ in the composition of the epics of the individual manuscripts and prints. Most often find one or two seals of the Dietrichepik such as lauric and virginal next to the cyclically interconnected epics of Ortnit and Wolf Dietrich. The I created behalf Maximilians Ambras Book of Heroes marked a special case in that it also contains courtly poetry ( Hartmann von Aue's Erec, for example ).

The plural hero books is used to denote this type of late medieval collection tradition. The Singular Book of Heroes is a manuscript or a pressure and needs to be supplemented so that, for example, knows what lauric tradition is what year or century meant for accurate identification by a signature or place name. , The Book of Heroes ' within the meaning of "original" -, "original " or "real " Book of Heroes "does not exist.

Book of Heroes - versions

• The oldest known book of heroes is only a fragmentary consuming Rhine Franconian manuscript from the first half of the 14th century with corner song, Virginal, Ortnit and Wolf Dietrich.

• More than 100 years later, in 1472, includes Kaspar von der Rhön in Nuremberg said after today repository Dresden Book of Heroes. It contains Ortnit / Wolf Dietrich: Corner song, Rose Garden, Sigenot, Wunderer, Laurin, Virginal, the younger Hildebrandslied and - added later - sea wonders and Duke Ernst (both are no epics ).

• The handwriting of Lienhart Scheubels hero book was written 1480/1490 in Nuremberg and includes Virginal, story by Dwarf King Antelan, Ortnit / Wolf Dietrich, Nibelungenlied and the story of the Knight of the Swan Lorengel.

• The first Strasbourg Heldenbuch Goldsmith Diebold of Hanowe, also a manuscript, emerged about 1480 in Strasbourg. This is the first handbook with a preface that opens the delivery type designated as heroes book prose and provides an overview of the history and genealogy of the old heroes. The preface again follow Ortnit / Wolf Dietrich, Rose Garden, Laurin, Sigenot.

• The second Strasbourg Book of Heroes, a 1476 resulting manuscript contains Ortnit / Wolf Dietrich, Rose Garden, Salman and Morolf and Laurin.

• The first printing of the hero book, produced in 1479 probably in the dispensary of Johann Prüß the Elder with excellent woodcuts, contains Ortnit / Wolf Dietrich, Rose Garden, Laurin and heroes book prose. The title is the hero book / the calleth the wolf dieterich and so shows the central position occupied by the Wolf Dietrich text in this tradition. Wolf Dietrich is shown here to be the ancestor of Dietrich of Bern, Hildebrand Berchtung the ancestor of the clan and the Cub Scouts.

• Haguenau 1509th
• Augsburg to 1545.
• Frankfurt am Main 1560th
• Frankfurt am Main 1590th

Heroes of 19th century books

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

Of the students Karl waste Hoffs comes the " German Book of Heroes " ( Berl. 1866-73, 5 vols ).

A comprehensive renewal of the heroic saga, Karl Simrock under the same title in 6 volumes ( Stuttg. among others 1843ff. ) Was added.

These experiments, the assembled heroes in the books seals with equal success to spread as the then popular Nibelungenlied failed due to the relatively low literary quality. In Simrock they are well understood from the desire to promote the creation of a German national state after the Napoleonic occupation.