Poetry
The Hildebrandslied
Hildebrandslied
Anonymous · 830
Opening lines
Ik gihôrta dat seggen . . .
dat sih urhêttun ênôn muotin
Hiltibrant joh Hadubrant untar herjun tuêm.
I heard it told . . .
that they met in single combat,
Hildebrand and Hadubrand, between two hosts.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Two warriors meet between two armies. Hildebrand, the older, back after thirty years of exile in the service of Dietrich, asks the other whose son he is; he learns that he is facing Hadubrand, his own son, left behind as a child. He makes himself known and offers him gold rings; Hadubrand, who believes his father dead, refuses them, calls him a cunning old Hun and an impostor. Bound by honour, Hildebrand can no longer refuse the fight.
Context
The text was copied around 830 by two scribes of the abbey of Fulda, on the first and last pages of a theological codex; it breaks off at the start of the combat, for lack of space. It is the only surviving example in German of a Germanic heroic song, and its language mixes forms of High German and Low German. The story probably goes back to the Lombardy of the seventh or eighth centuries and is linked to the Dietrich of Bern cycle. Stolen in 1945, the manuscript was sold in the United States; one leaf returned to Kassel in 1955, the other in 1972. The Brothers Grimm produced the first scholarly edition and gave it its title.
Who it is for
Sixty-eight lines, to be read in a bilingual edition with commentary. It helps to know that Dietrich is the name that legend gives to the Gothic king Theodoric.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first masterpiece of German literature and its oldest poem; the manuscript is on display at the library in Kassel.