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Old High German literature refers to literature written in Old High German, from the earliest texts in the 8th century to the middle of the 11th century.
The term "literature" as it is used in connection with Old High German has a broader scope than for later periods in the history of German: it is not restricted to imaginative works but encompasses everything written in the language, including prayers and theological works as well as verse narratives. [1] [2] The surviving texts were written exclusively by clerics, in the main monks in a small number of monastic scriptoria, and serve almost entirely the purposes of the church in a region that was still being fully Christianized. Pre-Christian and non-clerical literary traditions are reflected in a small number of works, such as the Hildebrandslied and the charms, but otherwise there is little surviving evidence of the oral culture which must have been present outside clerical circles. [3]
The earliest texts date from the second half of the 8th century: translation aids (glosses and glossaries) for those learning to read Latin and translations of Latin Christian texts (prayers, creeds, confessions) for use in missionary or pastoral work among the lay population. Translations and, later, adaptations of Latin Christian texts, continue throughout the period, and are seen in Otfrid's gospel harmony in the 9th century and the extensive works of Notker III in the early 11th century. After Notker, there is gap of some 40 years before evidence of a new tradition of biblical verse in a form of language now called Early Middle High German, which is followed by the flourishing secular literature of Middle High German. [4]
The Old High German period sees the first attempts to use the Latin alphabet for writing German, something which Otfrid of Weissenburg, writing c. 830, recognized as fraught with difficulty. [5] As Murdoch explains, "Written down without prescriptive rules in more or less isolated monasteries, then, it is to be expected that Old High (and Old Low) German texts show a bewildering amount of linguistic variation." [6] The result is that there is no standard Old High German — each text presents a particular dialect (or dialect mixture), and in the absence of contemporary evidence for dialect boundaries, they have been termed "monastery dialects" (German Klosterdialekte). [7]
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The most famous work in OHG is the Hildebrandslied , a short piece of Germanic alliterative heroic verse which besides the Muspilli is the sole survivor of what must have been a vast oral tradition.
Works include the short but splendid Ludwigslied , celebrating the victory of the Frankish army, led by Louis III of France, over Danish (Viking) raiders at the Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu on 3 August 881. There is also the incomplete Das Georgslied about the life of Saint George, and the Wessobrunn Prayer , a praise of Creation and a plea for strength to withstand sin.
Works include the Evangelienbuch of Otfrid von Weissenburg, the Latin-German dictionary Abrogans , the magical Merseburg Charms and the Old High German translation of the theologian Tatian's Gospel harmony.
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German is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also an official language of Luxembourg and Belgium, as well as a recognized national language in Namibia. Outside Germany, it is also spoken by German communities in France (Alsace), Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary (Sopron).
German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects.
Wolfram von Eschenbach was a German knight, poet and composer, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of medieval German literature. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry.
Old High German is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous West Germanic dialects that had undergone the set of consonantal changes called the Second Sound Shift.
The Hildebrandslied is a heroic lay written in Old High German alliterative verse. It is the earliest poetic text in German, and it tells of the tragic encounter in battle between a father (Hildebrand) and a son (Hadubrand) who does not recognize him. It is the only surviving example in German of a genre which must have been important in the oral literature of the Germanic tribes.
The Georgslied is a set of poems and hymns to Saint George in Old High German.
The Merseburg charms or Merseburg incantations are two medieval magic spells, charms or incantations, written in Old High German. They are the only known examples of Germanic pagan belief preserved in the language. They were discovered in 1841 by Georg Waitz, who found them in a theological manuscript from Fulda, written in the 9th century, although there remains some speculation about the date of the charms themselves. The manuscript is stored in the library of the cathedral chapter of Merseburg, hence the name.
Otfrid of Weissenburg was a monk at the abbey of Weissenburg and the author of a gospel harmony in rhyming couplets now called the Evangelienbuch. It is written in the South Rhine Franconian dialect of Old High German. The poem is thought to have been completed between 863 and 871. Otfrid is the first German poet whose name we know from his work.
Muspilli is an Old High German alliterative verse poem known in incomplete form from a ninth-century Bavarian manuscript. Its subject is the fate of the soul immediately after death and at the Last Judgment. Many aspects of the interpretation of the poem, including its title, remain controversial among scholars.
The Ludwigslied is an Old High German (OHG) poem of 59 rhyming couplets, celebrating the victory of the Frankish army, led by Louis III of France, over Danish (Viking) raiders at the Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu on 3 August 881.
The appearance of the German language begins in the Early Middle Ages with the High German consonant shift. Old High German, Middle High German, and Early New High German span the duration of the Holy Roman Empire. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the rise of Standard German and a decrease of dialectal variety.
Kassel conversations is the conventional name of an early medieval text preserved in a manuscript from c. 810. It is held today in the university library of Kassel, Germany. It contains several parts, among them an Exhortatio ad plebem christianam, an instructional theological text in Latin. The part that has been of most interest for modern scholarship is that of the so-called Kassel glosses, one of the earliest written documents of the Old High German language.
Theodor Wilhelm Braune was a German philologist and Germanist.
Middle High German literature refers to literature written in German between the middle of the 11th century and the middle of the 14th. In the second half of the 12th century, there was a sudden intensification of activity, leading to a 60-year "golden age" of medieval German literature referred to as the mittelhochdeutsche Blütezeit. This was the period of the blossoming of Minnesang, MHG lyric poetry, initially influenced by the French and Provençal tradition of courtly love song. The same sixty years saw the composition of the most important courtly romances. again drawing on French models such as Chrétien de Troyes, many of them relating Arthurian material. The third literary movement of these years was a new revamping of the heroic tradition, in which the ancient Germanic oral tradition can still be discerned, but tamed and Christianized and adapted for the court.
Germanic heroic legend is the heroic literary tradition of the Germanic-speaking peoples, most of which originates or is set in the Migration Period. Stories from this time period, to which others were added later, were transmitted orally, traveled widely among the Germanic speaking peoples, and were known in many variants. These legends typically reworked historical events or personages in the manner of oral poetry, forming a heroic age. Heroes in these legends often display a heroic ethos emphasizing honor, glory, and loyalty above other concerns. Like Germanic mythology, heroic legend is a genre of Germanic folklore.
David Robert McLintock was a British academic and translator. A pre-eminent scholar of Old High German language and literature, who taught in Oxford and London, he later became a prize-winning translator, noted for helping to establish the reputation of the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard in the English-speaking world.
The heroic lay is a genre of Germanic epic poetry characteristic of the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages. A lay is a short narrative poem of between 80 and 200 lines concerning a single heroic episode in the life of a warrior from Germanic legend. It is distinct from the heroic epic which combines a sequence of episodes into a longer narrative.
Cyril William Edwards was a British medievalist and translator. Teaching in London and Oxford, he published extensively on the medieval German lyric and Old High German literature, and translated four of the major Middle High German verse narratives.
Wolfgang Haubrichs is a German philologist and medievalist who specializes in the study of Old High German literature.
In the Middle High German (MHG) period (1050–1350) the courtly romance, written in rhyming couplets, was the dominant narrative genre in the literature of the noble courts, and the romances of Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg and Wolfram von Eschenbach, written c. 1185 – c. 1210, are recognized as classics.