Middle High German language and literature

This article presents a manuscript that significantly enriches the textual corpus of ›Helfta Mysticism‹ with a series of hitherto unknown writings. Aside from this, it contains what is by some distance the oldest copy of the ›Legatus divinae pietatis‹, in the form of a ›special edition‹ that consists of excerpts from the known text as well as new material. This is preceded by a prologue and a florilegium which is marked in an epilogue as Gertrude’s own work. We argue that the epilogue of the florilegium, the prologue and the ›special edition‹ itself were probably composed by ›Sister N‹ of Helfta herself. The article provides a full description of the manuscript (Ms 827), a breakdown of the new ›special edition‹ of the ›Legatus‹-text, and an edition, translation, and close reading of the prologue.

Im Folgenden soll eine Handschrift vorgestellt werden, die die Textbasis der Helftaer Mystik mit einer Reihe von bislang unbekannten Schriften bereichert. Außerdem enthält sie die mit Abstand älteste Abschrift des ›Legatus divinae pietatis‹ in Form einer ›Sonderausgabe‹, die aus Exzerpten aus dem bekannten Textcorpus und aus weiterem bislang nicht bekanntem Material besteht. Dieser geht eine Vorrede und ein im Epilog als Gertruds Werk ausgewiesenes Florilegium voraus, Texte, die wie die ›Sonderausgabe‹ selbst von Schwester N von Helfta stammen dürften. Die vorliegende Studie bietet eine Beschreibung von Ms 827, die Aufschlüsselung der ›Sonderausgabe‹ des ›Legatus‹ sowie Abdruck, Übersetzung und inhaltliche Analyse der Vorrede.

The Middle High German Kaiserchronik (Book of the Emperors) is the first extensive world history in the vernacular in Germany. The paper will show how models of history writing are adapted in the text in order to follow a didactic purpose as well as a political agenda: imparting the knowledge of the history of the Empire in the light of good and bad rulers in order to emphasize the importance of a moral conduct to the reign for all Christendom. Moreover, by using models of universal history for writing imperial history the Kaiserchronik emphasizes the responsibility of both secular and ecclesiastical elites, especially popes and emperors, not just for the continuity of the Empire but for the continued existence of the world. The Kaiserchronik places the audience and their time in a framework of Roman universal history and, in its didactic approach, creates a political identity with which the elites in the Empire can connect. Thus, the text serves the promotion of a political agenda. It will be shown how the interface between a Latin literary tradition and didactic discourses in the vernacular provides a platform for the realization of this agenda.

The phenomenon we call chivalry becomes visible in the sources from the mid-twelfth century onwards, when the elites in Western Europe found themselves faced with a variety of changes—political, social, intellectual, and economical—that forced them to redefine their status and function in the world.  European elites were increasingly concerned with good conduct, morality, and self-representation. As Peltzer demonstrates in his contribution to this volume, chivalry in the Empire was closely connected to the special position of the ministeriales. This chapter contributes to the definition of Imperial chivalry in analysing the construction and promotion of the ideal in didactic texts in the German vernacular. It argues that these texts emphasise in particular the aspect of service present in medieval knighthood and thus offer chivalry as an ideal especially to ministeriales and lower ranking members of the secular elites.

Ausgehend von der methodischen Frage, auf welche Weise kognitive Ansätze der Diskursforschung auf historische Texte Anwendung finden können, rekonstruiert der Vortrag grammatische Muster zur Etablierung von Textwelten im Mittelhochdeutschen. Auf der theoretischen Grundlage der Text-Welt-Theorie (Werth 1999) und der théorie des espaces mentaux (Fauconnier 1984) wird das exemplarisch für den Bereich der Tempora durchgeführt.

This study examines the concept of male transvestism, or cross-dressing, as represented in the Latin, French, Old Norse, and German literatures of the European Middle Ages, with a primary focus on the Venus journey of the knight Ulrich von Liechtenstein. Most recent research views Ulrich's cross-dressing as the Lady Venus primarily from a literary perspective, focusing on the humor present in the portrayal of a medieval knight, who dresses in women's clothing, merely to demonstrate his love for a particular lady. Few critics have discussed the gender and transgender issues inherent in the self-portrayal of a medieval knight in the role and likeness of the Lady Venus. My investigation demonstrates how the portrayal of Ulrich's transvestism in his autobiography differs substantially from the portrayal of transvestism in contemporary medieval texts and corresponds closely to character sketches of transvestism derived from psychological and sociological studies of modern-day transvestites. Based on the research conducted in this study, Ulrich's Venus journey is reexamined, in order to answer the question: "Was Ulrich von Liechtenstein a transvestite from medieval times?" This work will appeal to medievalists, Germanists, students of psychology and anyone with an interest in transgender studies.
Dissertation, UW-Madison, 2007; published by Mellen Press, 2016

Diese Einführung versammelt in kompakter Form das aktuelle Basiswissen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters von den Anfängen um 750 bis etwa 1500. Sie eröffnet damit einen raschen Zugang zur ersten Phase der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, deren Kenntnis für die Beschäftigung mit allen späteren Epochen grundlegend ist. Der Band macht zunächst mit der älteren europäisch-lateinischen Bildungstradition bekannt und stellt dann die alt- und mittelhochdeutschen Dichtungen mit ihren Entstehungsbedingungen und Rezeptionsformen vor. Analysen und Bildbeispiele aus den Handschriften geben Anreize zu weiterer Auseinandersetzung mit mittelalterlichen Texten. Die Einführung ist als Arbeitsbuch für Grundkurse in den neuen BA-Studiengängen geeignet, kann aber genauso jedem Interessierten als Wegweiser zu den großen Werken des deutschen Mittelalters dienen.

Der als Fundbericht konzipierte Beitrag berichtet über die Wiederentdeckung einer seit mehr als 160 Jahren als verschollen geltenden besonders frühen Eckhart-Handschrift mit Übersetzungen vorwiegend aus dem "Opus expositionum", rekonstruiert die eruierbaren Zwischenstationen ihrer Tradierung in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und skizziert ihre Funktionalisierung auf der Wartburg in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. und der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Stichwort: Immersion), die mitverantwortlich dafür ist, dass die Handschrift dem Blick der Forschung entzogen blieb.

This paper traces the origin of the phrase "red gold" through the history of various Germanic literatures. Focusing on a few salient examples that demonstrate the high quality assigned to red gold, its proximity to the divine in religious metaphors, and its value in signifying nobility the place of "red" as the optimal descriptor for gold as a metal is revealed in precise terms. Further, the etymologies concerned are examined and the phrase is shown to likely have originated in the early stages of Proto-Germanic rather than having spread geographically from one tradition into another. While the topic of "red gold" has been discussed for quite some time, this systematic overview provides a clear perspective on the history and usage of the term.

This article employs a pragmatic linguistic methodology to examine the verbal conflict in the so-called “Quarrel of the Queens” episode from the Nibelung Legend of Middle High German and Old Norse literature. Völsungasaga, Þiðreks saga af Bern, and Das Nibelungenlied portray the quarrel in sufficient detail to permit a comparative assessment of strategies of verbal conflict.

For An updated and improved version of this article, see chapter two of my recent book Discourse in Old Norse Literature, available in print and digital form on Amazon and through the publisher, Boydell & Brewer.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Discourse-Old-Norse-Literature-Studies/dp/1843845970/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3THG7CF2A8QTQ&keywords=discourse+in+old+norse&qid=1646413314&sprefix=discourse+in+old+norse%2Caps%2C75&sr=8-1

B&B: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843845973/discourse-in-old-norse-literature/

Diese Bibliographie habe ich im Sommersemester 2016 für die Studierenden meines BA-Grundseminars zu Gottfrieds von Straßburg 'Tristan' an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf erstellt. Die Literaturhinweise richten sich an Studierende und sollen diesen die wichtigsten Textausgaben und Hilfsmittel sowie die neueste Forschungsliteratur zum 'Tristan' zugänglich machen. Die Liste erhebt keinen Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit.

Die Bibliographie ist in folgende Abschnitte unterteilt:
- Gottfrieds ‚Tristan’: Editionen, Übersetzungen, Kommentare und Wortindex
- Zur handschriftlichen Überlieferung von Gottfrieds ‚Tristan’
- Ausgaben anderer ‚Tristan’-Texte
- Bibliographien zu Gottfried von Straßburg
- Einführungen zu Gottfried von Straßburg
- Weiterführende Literatur zu Gottfrieds ‚Tristan’
- Einführungen in die germanistische Mediävistik
- Literaturgeschichten zum (Hoch-)Mittelalter
- Nachschlagewerke, Datenbanken, Internetportale
- Paläographie und Kodikologie, Handschriftenproduktion im hohen und späten Mittelalter

In the late Middle Ages the philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart preached that to know the truth you must be the truth. But how to be the truth? Eckhart’s answer comes in the form of an imperative: release yourself, let be. Only then will you be able to understand that the deepest meaning of being is releasement. Only then will you become who you truly are. This book interprets Eckhart’s Latin and Middle High German writings under the banner of an imperative of releasement, and then shows how the twentieth-century thinker Martin Heidegger creatively appropriates this idea at several stages of his career. Regardless of whether Heidegger is promoting the will or, like Eckhart, letting-be, the mood of Heidegger’s discourse, from beginning to end, is imperative. Experience is all.

Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement does not just offer a novel way to read Eckhart and Heidegger, though. It also carefully examines Heidegger’s lifelong fascination with “the old master of letters and life,” as Heidegger liked to refer to his German predecessor. Drawing on archival material and Heidegger’s marginalia in his personal copies of Eckhart’s writings, this book argues that Eckhart was one of the most important figures in Heidegger’s philosophy. The book also contains previously unpublished documents by Heidegger on Eckhart, as well as the first English translation of Nishitani Keiji’s seminal essay “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart,” which he initially gave as a presentation in one of Heidegger’s classes in 1938.

This document aims to support international students and scholars in reading up on medieval and early modern german literature by providing a selective bibliography of translations into international languages.

Cette bibliographie sélective avec traductions en langues internationales a pour but d’aider les étudiants et les chercheurs internationaux dans leur étude de la littérature médiévale et du début de l'époque moderne de langue allemande.

Esta selección bibliográfica con traducciones a idiomas internacionales pretende ayudar a los estudiantes e investigadores internacionales en su estudio de la literatura en lengua alemana de la Edad Media y principios de la Edad Moderna.

Against the backdrop of 13th century cultural history, the study examines the function of legendary narrative in Christian identity formation. Martyrdom, war, and conversion are the basic narratives in negotiating religious opposition to heathendom. These stories were handed down from the early beginnings of Christianity and specifically updated in the context of crusades and missions.

Formen und Funktionen des legendarischen Erzählens rücken in den letzten Jahren verstärkt in den Fokus der mediävistischen Forschung, wobei zumeist die Figur des oder der Heiligen im Zentrum steht. Nicht systematisch untersucht worden ist hingegen der Umstand, dass das Erzählen von Heiligen sich häufig mit dem Heidentum auseinandersetzt und viele Heilige gerade durch diese Auseinandersetzung ihr charakteristisches Profil gewinnen. Diese Lücke füllt die vorliegende Arbeit, wenn sie anhand eines breiten Korpus von lateinischen und volkssprachigen Legenden des 13. Jahrhunderts (vor allem aus ›Legenda aurea‹ und ›Passional‹, dazu etliche Einzellegenden auch aus dem höfischen Kontext) nach dem Zusammenhang von christlichen Heiligkeitsmodellen und der Aushandlung des religiösen Gegensatzes zum Heidentum fragt. Martyrium, Krieg und Konversion erweisen sich dabei als grundlegende Formen narrativer wie diskursiver Selbstvergewisserung des Christentums, die im kulturgeschichtlichen Zusammenhang der Kreuzzüge sowie der Neubegründung der Mission eine spezifische Aktualisierung erfahren – ein wichtiger Beitrag zur Bedeutung legendarischer Texte für die christliche Identitätsbildung und die religiöse Kultur des Mittelalters.

L’esilio di Tristano e Isotta nella selva interrompe le vicissitudini dell’adulterio consumato alla corte di re Marco in Cornovaglia e prelude alla definitiva separazione e alla morte degli amanti.
L’interpretazione che Gottfried von Straßburg dà della vicenda innesta nel plot romanzesco un intermezzo lirico: musica e poesia sottraggono temporaneamente gli amanti ai morsi delle privazioni e della colpa (e Tristano musico e maestro agli obblighi di Tristano cavaliere, cacciatore e trickster). Il passo ridefinisce il significato degli elementi narrativi di repertorio, il bando, la foresta, la grotta, la caccia, l’arpa, il talamo, la spada. L’esibizione della lama snudata tra i corpi vestiti degli amanti - motivo ricorrente e opaco - fa la parodia di celeberrimi luoghi letterari (dalla leggenda giudaico-cristiana di re David e da Amicus et Amelius, dove la spada è pegno di astinenza e castità), finendo per dire altro: la spada è quella donata da Marco a Tristano durante l’investitura e ne è poi morto Moroldo, sporcando irreparabilmente le relazioni fra i protagonisti del triangolo.
Il passo della Minnegrotte di Gottfried viene qui proposto da una delle redazioni manoscritte più antiche, Monaco, BSB, Cgm 51 (intitolato da una rubrica moderna Herr Tristrant). I codici di Heidelberg (Cpg 360) e Monaco, che trasmettono il romanzo incompiuto di Gottfried con la ‘continuazione’ di Ulrich von Türheim, divergono nell’estensione del lungo episodio. Alcune sequenze presenti nel manoscritto di Heidelberg (con la stilizzazione ovidiana, le allegorie e la disillusa autobiografia sentimentale del poeta) sono assenti in quello di Monaco. Il codice monacense, un Tristano ‘istoriato’, ne offre una versione ridotta, un testo talora banalizzato e un interessante layout. Gruppi di miniature a tutta pagina ne riproducono le scene salienti con l’accompagnamento di didascalie, aggiunte nel tempo da svariate mani. L’illustrazione al f. 90r, nei tre registri include l’azione completa dell’episodio riletto in questo volume: il bando dalla corte; la spada nel talamo; la riammissione a corte di Tristrant e Isot.

This edition was my editorial project for Toronto's certificate program in medieval text editing, which I completed in 2012. Parts of the draft have since been incorporated into my 2014 JEGP article on the Lambeth Homilies, but much remains unpublished. I hope to return to this text in the near future.

The oldest surviving Polish Christian chant “Bogurodzica” shows Old Czech, Latin and Middle High German traits. Some of the Old Polish archaic linguistic features are also typical of oral usage, and thus the chant dates back to the initial period of Polish writing. The text testifies to neither Byzantine nor Church Slavonic influence. It patterns after Middle High German chants dedicated to the Mother of God (Mariendichtung) and presents “Polish response to German poetry”.
Keywords: Bogurodzica, Old Polish, Church Slavonic, Old Czech, Middle High German.

Questo breve testo prende le  mosse da un interrogativo di linguistica contrastiva: come si può individuare una linea coerente per l'apprendimento del genere dei sostantivi in tedesco partendo dalla madrelingua italiana? Da questo interrogativo molto... pratico emerge una riflessione che coinvolge il rapporto fra percezione, fenomenologia e linguaggio, nonché riflessioni che toccano il problema dell'identità di genere.

Drawing on notable Franciscan devotional and legislative texts from the German literary tradition, specifically from the 13th to the 15th centuries, the present monograph seeks to investigate the function of stereotypical linguistic structures and models for the composition of texts, and also particular patterns of their variation in the medieval manuscript tradition. The book contains a newly edited version of four tracts and of one prayer written in Middle High German by the Franciscan novice master David of Augsburg (c. 1200-1272). Also, a number of little-known tracts are being published here for the very first time, these being documents of Franciscan origin, but whose exact authorship is unknown. By way of supplementary materials, the monograph includes German versions of the sermons of Berthold of Regensburg, late medieval manuscript collections of devotional prose, and also works written by well-known representatives of German mysticism, such as Mechthild of Magdeburg and Meister Eckhart. The book has been written in Russian, but it is accompanied by a detailed summary (pages 654-670) and a list of its contents (pages 671-673) in German.

The so called Three Good Brothers charm (in German Drei Brüder Segen) is part of a rich corpus of Medieval remedies against bleeding and wounds. The text has a bipartite structure with a dialogical historiola in which Jesus Christ reveals the brothers how to cure all kind of wounds. As it also contains the Longinus motif it is also referred to as a “Longinus charm”.
The charm, whose origin is probably the Latin Tres boni fratres, has a very long and rich manuscript tradition which begins in the 12-13th century in almost all European languages.
The most significant features of this text are its linguistic, geographic and time extension, and a peculiar motif-combination. The 26 German versions survive in 24 manuscripts written between the 13th and the 17th century; the central chapter of the present book deals with the description and transcription of those manuscripts. The oldest German variant of the 13th century is also known as Münchener Wundsegen “Munic wounds Charm” (Clm. 23374, f. 16v, see Chapter 2.16).
The rich motifs collection and the different manuscript versions have hitherto inhibited a philological edition with traditional methods, but the difficulty to find the "original text" or the "best manuscript" should not impede a philological analysis of the text.
This book advances a combination between rigorous philological analysis and investigation of the variants as a proof of the circulation of the text in everyday life.
The purpose of this book is to enhance the study of the Three Good Brothers charm by inquiring into the matter of oral discourse and of variability of the text. At the same time, the book seeks to suggest a different method for editing variant-texts.
The sections contained in chapter 1 focus on theoretical and methodological issues as well as on a review on other studies on this charm. The purpose of chapter 1 is to draw attention to the assumed oral origin of the text, the presumed double transmission (oral and written) and, as a consequence, to the philological problems. This chapter argues that there is no original version and therefore asserts that it does not have any sense to look for the oldest, the original, the pure text. After examining some crucial theoretical points it focuses on the method or methods which may be applied to investigate this text.
The second chapter is a review of all the manuscripts containing the German version of the charm. Each one is described following the catalogues and adding personal observations. A truthful transcription of all the German versions as they are written in the manuscripts is here given for the first time, along with images of manuscripts. In chapter three all the motifs pattern are compared and analyzed. After having examined all the known German versions the concluding chapter advances a cultural and linguistic overview.
At the end, an appendix files all other versions of the charm in other languages (including Latin) and all the charms which in some way resemble the Three Good Brothers charm or contain one or more of its motifs. The texts collected in the Appendix are quoted from other studies and not always have been checked in the manuscripts, but they may be useful as a comparison.
The book mainly addresses scholars and students of German philology and historical linguistics but the result of my research may be also useful to medievalists and to specialists in folklore and folk narrative studies.

Il contributo è una sintesi dei primi esiti parziali della mia tesi di laurea sulla riconsiderazione del ciclo di Garello a Castel Roncolo in anticipo, tesi che discuterò a fine giugno 2014 all’Istituto di storia dell’arte della Goethe-Universität di Francoforte, e si basa sulle ricerche da me svolte in loco nell’estate del 2013.

In late 1967, shortly after having been released from a Parisian psychiatric hospital, the poet Paul Celan turned his attention to the Middle High German writings of the speculative mystic Meister Eckhart. Celan’s engagement with Eckhart’s work resulted in the final three poems of the final volume of poetry that Celan was able to submit for publication before drowning himself in the Seine in 1970. These three poems thus might be said to mark a certain culmination of Celan’s own work, although, for those familiar with the latter, this idea might seem strange. What does a late-medieval Dominican have to do with a post-Holocaust Jewish poet? Celan, who bridges and challenges numerous traditions and languages in his poetic activity, would have been drawn to the mediating work of Eckhart’s corpus. However, Celan was also disturbed by Eckhart’s central concept of abegescheidenheit (Modern German Abgeschiedenheit) or ‘detachment,’ especially in the wake of the Shoah. In this paper, I survey Celan’s critical appropriation of Eckhart by offering brief commentaries on his three Eckhart-poems. I focus on the themes of memory and detachment.

Диссертация на соискание ученой степени доктора филологических наук по специальности 10.02.20 — сравнительно-историческое, типологическое и сопоставительное языкознание и 10.02.04 — германские языки. Санкт-Петербург, 2014. - На правах рукописи.

This paper aims at assessing the meaning and text-critical value of a puzzling appearance of Apollonius, in a crucial point within the poem of my title: in Alexanderlied manuscripts,  after the fall and the devastation of the stronghold Tyre and before continuing toward the next episodes of the Persian campaign, the poet adds a notice, in which the learned reminiscence of Apollonius’s story and a scriptural allusion (from Mt 15, 21-22, the apologue of Jesus exorcising the daughter of the pious Cananea) are matched together. The verse sequence concerning Apollonius has a remote source of inspiration in Curtius’ text. Scriptural matter, read with a glance on Crusade chroniclers, however, impregnates even the primary models (in our case, that of Curtius, which represents the paramount inspiration for the Tyre episode in the Alexanderlied tradition). The same couple of people (Apollonius and Jesus) emerges among the learned memories that William of Tyre organizes within his excursus on the city (13, 1), to introduce to its siege and capitulation. There a profusion of literary figures appear from a wide-ranging learned repertory culminating with Solomon and Hiram and Apollonius («gesta cuius celebrem habent et late vulgatam historiam»: 13, 1, 61). After the list of Tyrian celebrities, William’s excursus devotes a long account  to the story of the riddle race between Hiram and Solomon, which strictly follows Josephus. William’s excursus, as the corresponding passage in Alexanderlied, is closed by the evangelical apologue on Jesus meeting the Cananea and freeing her daughter from the Devil. The relationships between the Alexander and Apollonius matters are well-known through relevant manuscripts which couple them together (as the oldest codices of Curtius’ Supplement, from 12th-century France, which match them with Josephus’ Antiquitates also)  and the very inception of the French-German Alexander complex of the century is affected by the impact of the Crusaders’ subjugation of Tyre in 1124

This paper investigates the development of sentential negation in Middle High German using sermons from the Upper German dialect area. To this end, a heterogeneous yet fine-grained corpus of Alemannic and Bavarian sermons is analysed with respect to diachronic development, geographical distribution and language-internal factors. What becomes clear is that Jespersen's Cycle, a cross-linguistic model of the development of negation that can be seen as part of the received history of German negation, fails to account for the mechanisms in the development of sentential negation in German. These mechanisms cannot be understood independently of the – in some respects parallel – development of n-indefinites. It appears that the interplay of variation and the grammaticalisation of the n-indefinite nicht, which co-occurred with ne but could also appear on its own, played a more important role in the emergence of the negation particle nicht than previously thought. It is argued that when nicht was grammaticalised it retained the variation of the n-indefinite nicht, and that the subsequent loss of ne was a parallel development in both usages of nicht.

Der Aufsatz fasst vorab erste Teilergebnisse meiner Magisterarbeit zur Neubetrachtung des Garelzyklus auf Schloss Runkelstein zusammen, die ich Ende Juni 2014 am Kunstgeschichtlichen Institut der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main einreichen werde, und beruht u. a. auf meinen Recherchen vor Ort im Sommer 2013.

The present volume is the first of four on the medieval Icelandic fornaldarsögur, a corpus of Old Icelandic sagas that were written mostly in the 13th and 14th centuries. The sagas deal with legendary and fictional heroes and are based on legends that were common to the Nordic and ultimately the Germanic peoples, and which had strong roots in oral tradition and the oral poetry of previous ages. Though many of these legends now survive primarily in narrative form in the fornaldarsögur, they can also be glimpsed in other literature, in archaeological finds, and in medieval art from the Scandinavian countries, Germany, France and the British Isles. The four-volume collection, Arfur aldanna I–IV, seeks to explore, firstly, the origins of this legendary material and how it spread throughout Northern Europe, and secondly, the Icelandic legendary saga corpus, in which this narrative material found its richest and most memorable representation.

Article in Dutch "Did Philip the Good read in Dutch at times? ‘Small languages’ in the Burgundian Library". The 15th-century library of the Burgundian dukes consisted of 80 % French and 15 % Latin manuscripts. The manuscripts in other languages, though a small group, are in fact very interesting for the sake of the constitution and the sources of the book collection and thus for research on cultural exchange in later medieval Western Europe. There are six known in English, seven in (High) German and fifteen in Dutch. This article discusses their contents and several hypotheses about their origins.

Die Studie verdankt sich der Identifizierung des ʽHeltauer Marienliedesʼ in zwei Handschriften, die wie die von CAROLA L. GOTTZMANN 1991 bekannt gemachte Grazer Handschrift Ms. 1972 dem bairisch-österreichischen Raum entstammen: Paris, BN, Ms. lat. 16664, fol. 4r und Wien, ÖNB, Cod. 3835, fol. 82v-84r. Mein besonderes Augenmerk gilt der Vorstellung der überlieferten Handschriften des ʽHeltauer Marienliedesʼ (die Handschrift aus Heltau [rumänisch Cisnădie, ungarisch Nagydisznód] ist seit 1916 verschollen), geben sie doch Aufschluss wenn auch nicht über die funktionale Einbindung, so doch über die Überlieferung dieses Textes, der im deutschen Südosten nachweislich als Lied wahrgenommen wurde. Mir geht es also nicht (bzw. nicht in erster Linie) darum, ob das Lied in liturgischen oder außerliturgischen Kultzusammenhängen verwendet wurde oder der privaten Lektüre diente, denn die untersuchten Handschriften bieten keine eindeutigen Indizien, die es erlauben würden, diese im Zusammenhang der Diskussion um die Funktionsbestimmung des mittelalterlichen geistlichen Liedes aufgekommene Frage zu beantworten. Ergiebiger scheint mir, die Orte der Überlieferung in den Blick zu nehmen. Gefragt werden soll also nach der Verortung unseres Textes innerhalb der jeweiligen Handschrift und der Zuordnung der jeweiligen Handschrift zu einer bestimmten sozialen Formation. Diese Untersuchungen zur Überlieferung werden durch eine Edition komplettiert, die das ʽHeltauer Marienliedʼ in synoptischer Form präsentiert, indem auf der einen Seite die durch den Heltauer Text vertretene ostmitteldeutsche, auf der anderen die durch die Handschriften aus Graz, Paris und Wien repräsentierte bairisch-österreichischen Texttradition dargeboten wird.