elements with both. His songs already refl ect a strong
sense of the modern individual with the emphasis on
personal experiences, ideas, needs, and desires, but they
are, at the same time, deeply drenched in the medieval
concept of human sinfulness and of life as nothing but
a transitional period here on earth.
See also Charles d’Orléans; Neidhart
Further Reading
Classen, Albrecht. “Oswald von Wolkenstein,” in German Writ-
ers of the Renaissance and Reformation 1280–1580, ed.
James Hardin and Max Reinhart. Detroit: Gale, 1997, pp.
198–205.
Die Lieder Oswalds von Wolkenstein, ed. Karl Kurt Klein et al.,
3d. ed. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1987.
Jahrbuch der Oswald von Wolkenstein Gesellschaft, 1ff.
(1980/1981ff.).
Joschko, Dirk. Oswald von Wolkenstein. Eine Monographie zu
Person, Werk und Forschungsgeschichte. Göppingen: Küm-
merle, 1985.
Oswald von Wolkenstein. Sämtliche Lieder und Gedichte, trans.
Wernfried Hofmeister. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1989 [modern
German trans.].
Schwob, Anton. Oswald von Wolkenstein. Eine Biographie, 3d
ed. Bozen: Athesia, 1979.
——. Die Lebenszeugnisse Oswalds von Wolkenstein. Edi-
tion und Kommentar. Bd. 1, 1382 – 1419 , Nr. 1 – 92. Vienna:
Böhlau, 1999.
Spicker, Johannes. Literarische Stilisierung und artistische Kom-
petenz bei Oswald von Wolkenstein. Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1993.
Albrecht Classen
OTFRID (ca. 800–ca. 875)
A monk of the abbey of Weißenburg (now Wissembourg
in Alsace), Otfrid is the author of a remarkable poem
based on the four gospels, completed by about 870 and
preserved in four manuscripts, three of them complete or
nearly so. The famous Vienna manuscript was carefully
corrected, and perhaps written in part, by Otfrid himself.
Otfrid composed the poem in a new, stress-based
strophic verse form with two long lines per strophe.
Each long line contains two half lines joined by rhyme
or at least assonance at the caesura (audible break at the
middle of a line). Thus the Lord’s Prayer begins:
Fáter unser gúato, bist drúhtin thu gim‡ato
in hímilon io hóher, uuíh si námo thiner.
Biquéme uns thinaz ríchi, thaz hoha hímilrichi,
thára uuir zua io gíngen ioh émmizigen thíngen.
Our Father good, thou art a kindly king
so high in the heavens, holy be thy name.
Thy kingdom come to us, the high kingdom of heaven,
toward which may we always strive and fi rmly
believe. (2,22,27-30)
All four manuscripts show the caesura and use ini-
tials, indentation, and rhythmic accents to explicate and
show off the new verse form. Otfrid describes the meter
and his spelling innovations in a letter to archbishop
Liutbert of Mainz (included in two manuscripts), where
his pride of invention is everywhere apparent. Sugges-
tions that Otfrid merely modifi ed an existing German
verse form are therefore unlikely. Neither did Otfrid
slavishly imitate Latin hymnody of the period: though
some contemporary Latin hymns also show assonance,
rhyme, and/or alternating stress, the overall effect of his
poem is quite different. Otfrid’s verse form was quickly
used in several other Old High German and early Middle
High German poems and seems the likely basis for the
couplets of the Middle High German courtly epics.
Otfrid portrays the life of Christ as described in the
four gospels, but his work is not merely a verse transla-
tion. After many narrative sections, he includes passages
for refl ection, labeling them mystice, or in a mystical
sense. As in Germanic alliterative verse, Otfrid con-
stantly repeats and restates ideas and phrases, often for
the sake of the rhyme or the rhythm. His writing seems
prolix; in the passage above, he uses thirty words where
the alliterating Old Saxon Heliand has twenty-one and
the prose Weißenburg Catechism only thirteen.
Otfrid’s attention to meter and orthography sug-
gests that the poem was meant to be read aloud or even
chanted (one manuscript has some neums, an early form
of musical notation), but it could have had no place in
the Latin liturgy of the time.
The dialect of the poem is Southern Rhenish Fran-
conian, though in part because of Otfrid’s orthographic
innovations, it differs slightly from that of other Weißen-
burg documents.Further Reading
Haubrichs, Wolfgang. “Otfrid von Weißenburg: Übersetzer,
Erzähler, Interpret... .” in Übersetzer im Mittelalter, ed.
Joachim Heinzle et al. Wolfram-Studien 14. Berlin: Schmidt,
1996, pp. 13–45.
Kleiber, Wolfgang. Otfrid von Weißenburg: Untersuchungen zur
handschriftlichen Überlieferung und Studien zum Aufbau des
Evangelienbuches. Bern: Francke, 1971.
Murdoch, Brian O. Old High German Literature. Boston:
Twayne, 1983.
Patzlaff, Rainer. Otfrid von Weißenburg und die mittelalterliche
versus-Tradition. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1975.
Schweikle, Gunther. “Die Herkunft des althochdeutschen Reimes:
Zu Otfried von Weißenburgs formgeschichtlicher Stellung.”
Zeitschrifi für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 96
(1967): 166–212.
Leo A. ConnollyOTTO I (912–973)
King of Germany 936–973 and emperor 962–973, Otto
(the Great) was a member of the Liudolfi ng, or Saxon,
dynasty, born in 912 to the future Henry I and his wife,OTTO I