The first page of the Hildebrandslied manuscriptThe second page of the Hildebrandslied manuscript
The Hildebrandslied (German:[ˈhɪldəbʁantsˌliːt]; Lay or Song of Hildebrand) 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 text was written in the 830s on two spare leaves on the outside of a religious codex in the monastery of Fulda. The two scribes were copying from an unknown older original, which itself must ultimately have derived from oral tradition. The story of Hildebrand and Hadubrand almost certainly goes back to 7th- or 8th-century Lombardy and is set against the background of the historical conflict between Theodoric and Odoacer in 5th-century Italy, which became a major subject for Germanic heroic legend. The fundamental story of the father and son who fail to recognize each other on the battlefield is much older and is found in a number of Indo-European traditions.
The manuscript itself has had an eventful history: twice looted in war but eventually returned to its rightful owner, twice moved to safety shortly before devastating air-raids, repeatedly treated with chemicals by 19th-century scholars, once almost given to Hitler, and torn apart and partly defaced by dishonest book dealers. It now resides, on public display, in a secure vault in the Murhard Library in Kassel.
The text is highly problematic: as a unique example of its genre, with many words not found in other German texts, its interpretation remains controversial. Difficulties in reading some of the individual letters and identifying errors made by the scribes mean that a definitive edition of the poem is impossible. One of the most puzzling features is the dialect, which shows a mixture of High German and Low German spellings which cannot represent any actually spoken dialect.
In spite of the many uncertainties over the text and continuing debate on the interpretation, the poem is widely regarded as the first masterpiece of German literature.
There can surely be no poem in world literature the exposition and development of which are terser and more compelling.
The Hildebrandslied (German: [ˈhɪldəbʁantsˌliːt]; Lay or Song of Hildebrand) is a heroic lay written in Old High German alliterative verse. It is the...
Hildebrand appears in many works, most prominently in the Old High German Hildebrandslied, the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, in the Old Norse song "Hildebrand's...
survivals we have today (less than 200 lines in total between the Hildebrandslied and the Muspilli). Einhard tells how Charlemagne himself ordered that...
century, chief among them being the Muspilli, Merseburg charms, and Hildebrandslied, and other religious texts (the Georgslied, Ludwigslied, Evangelienbuch...
English poems Widsith, Deor, and Waldere, the Old High German poem Hildebrandslied, and possibly the Rök runestone. The bulk of the legendary material...
great kingdom in Italy for Theodoric to exploit. The Old High German Hildebrandslied mentions Odoacer (as Otacher) as the person who drove Hildebrand from...
run until about the mid-11th century; the most famous works are the Hildebrandslied and a heroic epic known as the Heliand. Middle High German starts in...
tradition. The ballad the Jüngeres Hildebrandslied (c. 1450) concerns the same material as the early medieval Hildebrandslied. Finally, a number of heroic texts...
duel, a bejewelled memento, and the lost horse. Aided Óenfhir Aífe Hildebrandslied Ebrahimi, Mokhtar & Taheri, Abdollah. (2017). The Tragedy in the Story...
their sons in combat ("Rostam and Sohrab", a motif also found in the Hildebrandslied), are virtually invincible in combat, and are murdered by treachery...
his brother. In 1812 they published the two ancient fragments of the Hildebrandslied and the Weißenbrunner Gebet, Jacob having discovered what until then...
Cycle, with Cú Chulainn fighting many duels. In the Old High German Hildebrandslied, champion warfare between a father and his son are the main theme....
glosses (Abrogans) date to the 8th and the oldest coherent texts (the Hildebrandslied, the Muspilli and the Merseburg Incantations) to the 9th century. Middle...
digitized. The two most impressive items of the collection are the Hildebrandslied (from c. 830) and the proof copy of the Children's and Household Tales...
and Old High German. By the end of his second he could recite the Hildebrandslied and intone Bishop Ulfila's Gothic translation of the Bible in his college...
bill is used. Heliand (v. 4882) has billes biti "sword-bite". The Hildebrandslied has a parallelism establishing bill and suert as synonyms (v. 53f....
for the Hildebrandslied and the Willehalm Codex". March 2005. Opritsa D. Popa. Bibliophiles and Bibliothieves: The Search for the Hildebrandslied and the...
documented use of "degano" as a substantive is observed in the epic poem "Hildebrandslied" of langobardic origin, written in Old High German with Old Saxon elements...
Fewer than 200 Old High German lines survive, in four works: the Hildebrandslied, Muspilli, the Merseburg Charms and the Wessobrunn Prayer. All four...
Etzel against his usurping uncle, Ermenrich. Only the Old High German Hildebrandslied still contains Odoacer (Old High German: Otacher) as Dietrich's antagonist...
sequence of episodes into a longer narrative. Old High German The Hildebrandslied Old Norse Atlakviða Hamðismál Old English The Finnesburg Fragment Hatto...
library's holdings is the manuscript of the 9th-century German poem, the Hildebrandslied. The first component of the library, the Landesbibliothek, evolved...
three centuries after the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, or the Hildebrandslied, written at Fulda 300 years after the Christianization of the Franks...
ISBN 3-11-017163-5. Retrieved 14 March 2024. Maurer, Friedrich (1957). "Hildebrandslied und Ludwigslied. Die altdeutschen Zeugen der hohen Gattungen der Wanderzeit"...
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