Hildebrandslied

The first page of theHildebrandsliedmanuscript

The second page of theHildebrandsliedmanuscript

TheHildebrandslied(German:[ˈhɪldəbʁantsˌliːt];LayorSong of Hildebrand) is aheroic laywritten inOld High Germanalliterative verse.It is the earliestpoetic textin 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 theoral literatureof theGermanic tribes.

The text was written in the 830s on two spare leaves on the outside of a religious codex in themonastery 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-centuryLombardyand is set against the background of the historical conflict betweenTheodoricandOdoacerin 5th-century Italy, which became a major subject forGermanic 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 ofIndo-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 theMurhard LibraryinKassel.

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 ofHigh GermanandLow Germanspellings 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.

— A. T. Hatto

Synopsis

The opening lines of the poem set the scene: two warriors meet on a battlefield, probably as the champions of their two armies.

As the older man,Hildebrandopens by asking the identity and genealogy of his opponent. Hadubrand reveals that he did not know his father but the elders told him his father was Hildebrand, who fled eastwards in the service ofDietrich(Theodoric) to escape the wrath of Otacher (Odoacer), leaving behind a wife and small child. He believes his father to be dead.

Hildebrand responds by saying that Hadubrand will never fight such a close kinsman (an indirect way of asserting his paternity) and offers gold arm-rings he had received as a gift from the Lord of the Huns (the audience would have recognized this as a reference toAttila,whom according to legend Theodoric served).

Hadubrand takes this as a ruse to get him off guard and belligerently refuses the offer, accusing Hildebrand of deception, and perhaps implying cowardice. Hildebrand accepts his fate and sees that he cannot honourably refuse battle: he has no choice but to kill his own son or be killed by him.

They start to fight, and the text concludes with their shields smashed. But the poem breaks off in the middle of a line, not revealing the outcome.

The text

The text consists of 68 lines of alliterative verse, though written continuously with no consistent indication of the verse form. It breaks off in mid-line, leaving the poem unfinished at the end of the second page. However, it does not seem likely that much more than a dozen lines are missing.

The poem starts:

Ik gihorta ðat seggen
ðat sih urhettunænon muotin
Hiltibrant enti Haðubrantuntar heriun tuem
sunufatarungoiro saro rihtun
garutun se iro guðhamungurtun sih iro suert ana
helidos ubar hringado sie to dero hiltiu ritun

I heard tell
That warriors metin single combat
Hildebrand and Hadubrandbetween two armies
son and fatherprepared their armour
made ready their battle garmentsgirded on their swords
the warriors, over their ring mailwhen they rode to battle.

The text of the Hildebrandslied in Braune'sAlthochdeutsches Lesebuch,8th edition, 1921

Structure

The basic structure of the poem comprises a long passage of dialogue, framed by introductory and closing narration.A more detailed analysis is offered by McLintock:

1. Introductory narrative(ll. 1–6): The warriors meet and prepare for combat.
2. Hildebrand's 1st speech,with introductory formula and characterization(ll. 7–13): Hildebrand asks his opponent's identity.
3. Hadubrand's 1st speech,with introductory formula(ll. 14–29): Hadubrand names himself, tells how his father left with Dietrich, and that he believes him to be dead.
4. Hildebrand's 2nd Speech(ll. 30–32): Hildebrand indicates his close kinship with Hadubrand.
   Narrative(ll. 33–35a): Hildebrand removes an arm-ring
   Hildebrand's 3rd speech(l. 35b): and offers it to Hadubrand.
5. Hadubrand's 2nd speech,with introductory formula(ll. 36–44): Hadubrand rejects the proffered arm-ring, accuses Hildebrand of trying to trick him, and reasserts his belief that his father is dead.
6. Hildebrand's 4th speech,with introductory formula(ll. 45–62): Hildebrand comments that Hadubrand's good armour shows he has never been an exile. Hildebrand accepts his fate, affirming that it would be cowardly to refuse battle and challenging Hadubrand to win his armour.
7. Closing narrative(ll. 63–68): The warriors throw spears, close for combat and fight until their shields are destroyed.

While this structure accurately represents the surviving manuscript text, many scholars have taken issue with the position of ll. 46–48 ( "I can see from your armour that you have a good lord at home and that you were never exiled under this regime" ).In these lines, as it stands, Hildebrand comments on Hadubrand's armour and contrasts his son's secure existence with his own exile. Such a measured observation perhaps seems out of keeping with the confrontational tone of the surrounding conversation.Many have suggested, therefore, that the lines should more correctly be given to Hadubrand — from his mouth they become a challenge to Hildebrand's story of exile — and placed elsewhere. The most widely accepted placing is after l. 57, after Hildebrand has challenged Hadubrand to take an old man's armour.This has the advantage that it seems to account for the extraneousquad Hiltibrantin ll. 49 and 58, which would normally be expected to introduce a new speaker and seem redundant (as well as hypermetrical) in the manuscript version.Alternatively, De Boor would place the lines earlier, before l.33, where Hildebrand offers an arm-ring.However, more recently the trend has been to accept the placing of these lines and see the task as making sense of the text as it stands.

Problems

In spite of the text's use of spare space in an existing manuscript, there is evidence that it was prepared with some care: the two sheets were ruled with lines for the script, and in a number of places letters have been erased and corrected.

The Wynn Rune

Two examples of the wynn rune on the second page of the Hildebrandslied manuscript. The text reads "wiges warne".

Nonetheless, some features of the text are hard to interpret as anything other than uncorrected errors. Some of these are self-evident copying errors, due either to misreading of the source or the scribe losing his place. An example of the latter is the repetition ofdarba gistuotunin l. 26b, which is hypermetrical and gives no sense – the copyist's eye must have been drawn to theDetrihhe darba gistuontunof l.23 instead of to theDeotrichhein l.26b.Other obvious copying errors includemihformir(l.13) andfatereresforfateres(l.24).

It seems also that the scribes were not entirely familiar with the script used in their source. The inconsistencies in the use and form of thewynn-rune, for example — sometimes with and sometimes without an acute stroke above the letter, once corrected from the letterp— suggest this was a feature of the source which was not a normal part of their scribal repertoire.

While these issues are almost certainly the responsibility of the Fulda scribes, in other cases an apparent error or inconsistency might already have been present in their source. The variant spellings of the namesHiltibrant/Hiltibraht,Hadubrant/Hadubraht,Theotrihhe/Detriche/Deotrichhe.were almost certainly present in the source.In several places, the absence of alliteration linking the two halves of a line suggests missing text, so ll.10a and 11b, which follow each other in the manuscript (fıreo ın folche • eddo welıhhes cnuosles du sis,"who his father was in the host • or what family you belong to" )), do not make a well-formed alliterating line and in addition display an abrupt transition between third-person narrative and second-person direct speech.The phrasequad hiltibrant( "said Hildebrand" ) in lines 49 and 58 (possibly line 30 also) breaks the alliteration and seems to be a hypermetrical scribal addition to clarify the dialogue.

In addition to errors and inconsistencies, there are other features of the text which make it hard to interpret. Some words arehapax legomena(unique to the text), even if they sometimes have cognates in other Germanic languages.Examples includeurhetto( "challenger" ),billi( "battle axe" ) andgudhamo( "armour" ).Since theHildebrandsliedis the earliest poetic text and the only heroic lay in German, and is the oldest heroic lay in any Germanic language, it is difficult to establish whether such words enjoyed broader currency in the 9th century or belonged to a (possibly archaic) poetic language.

The text's punctuation is limited: the only mark used is a sporadicpunctus(•), and identifying clause and sentence boundaries is not always straightforward. Since the manuscript gives no indication of the verse form, line divisions are the judgments of modern editors.

Finally, the mixture of language features, mostly High German (Upper German) but with some highly characteristicLow Germanforms, means that the text could never have reflected the spoken language of an individual speaker and never been meant for performance.

Frederick Norman concludes, "The poem presents puzzles alike to palaeographers, linguists and literary historians."

The manuscript

Description

Grimm's 1830 facsimile of the first page of the Hildebrandslied. Some damage from the use of chemical reagents is already apparent, but much more was to follow.

The manuscript of theHildebrandsliedis now in theMurhardsche BibliothekinKassel(signature 2° Ms. theol. 54).The codex consists of 76 folios containing two books of theVulgateOld Testament(theBook of WisdomandEcclesiasticus) and thehomiliesofOrigen.It was written in the 820s inAnglo-Saxon minusculeandCarolingian minusculehands. The text of theHildebrandsliedwas added in the 830s on the two blank outside leaves of the codex (1^rand 76^v).

The poem breaks off in the midst of the battle and there has been speculation that the text originally continued on a third sheet (now lost) or on theendpaperof the (subsequently replaced) back cover.However, it is also possible that the text was being copied from an incomplete original or represented a well-known episode from a longer story.

TheHildebrandsliedtext is the work of two scribes, of whom the second wrote only seven and a half lines (11 lines of verse) at the beginning of the second leaf. The scribes are not the same as those of the body of the codex.The hands are mainlyCarolingian minuscule.However, a number of features, including thewynn-rune(ƿ) used forwsuggestOld Englishinfluence, not surprising in a house founded by Anglo-Saxonmissionaries.

The manuscript pages now show a number of patches of discoloration. These are the results of attempts by earlier scholars to improve the legibility of the text with chemical agents.

History

The manuscript's combination of Bavarian dialect and Anglo-Saxonpalaeographicfeatures make Fulda the only monastery where it could have been written. With its missionary links to North Germany, Fulda is also the most likely origin for the earlier version of the poem in which Old Saxon features were first introduced.In around 1550 the codex was listed in the monastery's library catalogue.

In 1632, during theThirty Years War,the monastery was plundered and destroyed by Hessian troops. While most of the library's manuscripts were lost, the codex was among a number of stolen items later returned to theLandgraves of Hesse-Kasseland placed in the Court Library.In the aftermath of the political crisis of 1831, under the terms ofHesse's new constitutionthe library passed from the private possession of the landgraves to public ownership and became the Kassel State Library (Landesbibliothek).

In 1937 there was a proposal to make a gift of the manuscript toAdolf Hitler,but this was thwarted by the library's director, Wilhelm Hopf.

At the start of theSecond World War,the manuscript, along with 19 others, was moved from the State Library to the underground vault of a local bank. This meant that it was not harmed in theAllied bombing raid in September 1941,which destroyed almost all the library's holdings.In August 1943 the codex (along with the KasselWillehalmcodex) was moved for safe keeping out of Kassel completely to a bunker inBad Wildungen,south-west of the city, just in time to escape the devastating air-raids the following October, which destroyed the whole of the city centre. After the capture of Bad Wildungen by units of theUS Third Armyin March 1945, the bunker was looted and the codex went missing. An official investigation by theUS Military Governmentfailed to discover its fate.In November 1945 it was sold by US army officer Bud Berman to theRosenbach Company,rare book dealers inPhiladelphia.At some point the first folio, with the first page of the Hildebrandslied, was removed (presumably in order to disguise the origin of the codex, since that sheet carried the library's stamp). In 1950, even though thePierpont Morgan Libraryhad raised questions about the provenance of the codex and the Rosenbachs must have known it was looted, it was sold to the Californian bibliophileCarrie Estelle Dohenyand placed in the Edward Laurence Doheny Memorial Library inCamarillo.In 1953 the codex was traced to this location, and in 1955 it was returned to Kassel. However, it was only in 1972 that the missing first folio (and the KasselWillehalm) was rediscovered in the Rosenbach Museum and reunited with the codex.

The manuscript is now on permanent display in the Murhard Library.

Reception

Attention was first drawn to the codex and the Hildebrandslied byJohann Georg von Eckhart,who published the first edition of the poem in 1729.This included a hand-drawn facsimile of the start of the text, with a full transcription, a Latin translation and detailed glosses of the vocabulary.His translation shows a considerable range of errors and misconceptions (Hildebrand and Hadubrand are seen as cousins, for example, who meet on the way to battle).Also, he did not recognize the text as verse, and its historical significance consequently remained unappreciated.

Both the fact and the historical significance of the alliterative verse form were first recognized by theBrothers Grimmin their 1812 edition,which also showed improved transcription and understanding compared to Eckhart's,This is generally regarded as the first scholarly edition and there have been many since.

Wilhelm Grimmwent on to publish the firstfacsimileof the manuscript in 1830,by which time he had recognized the two different hands and the oral origin of the poem.He had also become the first to use reagents in an attempt to clarify the text.

The first photographic facsimile was published bySieversin 1872.This clearly shows the damage caused by the reagents used by Grimm and his successors.

The language

One of the most puzzling features of theHildebrandsliedis its language, which is a mixture ofOld High German(with some specificallyBavarian features) andOld Saxon.For example, the first person pronoun appears both in the Old Saxon formikand the Old High Germanih.The reason for the language mixture is unknown, but it seems certain it cannot have been the work of the last scribes and was already present in the original which they copied.

The Old Saxon features predominate in the opening part of the poem and show a number of errors, which argue against an Old Saxon original. Thealliterationofricheandreccheoin line 48 is often regarded as conclusive: the equivalent Old Saxon forms,rīkeandwrekkio,do not alliterate and would have given a malformed line.Earlier scholars envisaged an Old Saxon original, but an Old High German original is now universally accepted.

The errors in the Old Saxon features suggest that the scribe responsible for the dialect mixture was not thoroughly familiar with the dialect. Forms such asheittu(l.17) andhuitte(l.66) (Modern Germanheißenandweiß) are mistakes for Old Saxon spellings with a single⟨t⟩.They suggest a scribe who does not realise that Old High Germanzz,resulting from theHigh German consonant shift,corresponds totin Old Saxon in these words, nottt,that is, a scribe who has limited first-hand knowledge of Old Saxon.

The origin of theDietrich legendin Northern Italy also suggests a southern origin is more likely.

TheEast Franconiandialect of Fulda wasHigh German,but the monastery was a centre of missionary activity to Northern Germany. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume there was some knowledge of Old Saxon there, and perhaps even some Old Saxon speakers. However, the motivation for attempting a translation into Old Saxon remains inscrutable, and attempts to link it with Fulda's missionary activity among the Saxons remain speculative.

An alternative explanation treats the dialect as homogeneous, interpreting it as representative of an archaic poetic idiom.

Analogues

Germanic

Legendary material about Hildebrand survived in Germany into the 17th centuryand also spread to Scandinavia, though the forms of names vary. A number ofanalogueseither portray or refer to Hildebrand's combat with his son:

• In Book VII of theGesta Danorum(early 13th century), Hildiger reveals as he is dying that he has killed his own son.
• In the 13th centuryOld NorseÞiðreks saga,based on lost Low German sources, Hildibrandr defeats his son, Alibrandr. Alibrandr offers his sword in surrender but attempts to strike Hildibrandr as he reaches for it. Hildibrandr taunts him for having been taught to fight by a woman, but then asks if he is Alibrandr and they are reconciled.
• TheEarly New High GermanJüngeres Hildebrandslied(first attested in the fifteenth century) tells a similar story of the treacherous blow, the taunt that the son was taught to fight by a woman, and the final reconciliation.
• In the 14th centuryOld NorseÁsmundar saga kappabana,Hildibrandr laments being forced to slay his son:

Liggr þar inn svási || sonr at höfði
eptir, erfingi, || er ek eiga gat;
óviljandi || aldrs synjaðak.

‘The beloved son lies there behind at my head, the heir whom I begot; unwillingly I deprived [him] of life.’

• In theFaroese balladSnjólvskvæði,Hildebrand is tricked into killing his son.

Other Indo-European

There are three legends in otherIndo-Europeantraditions about an old hero who must fight his son and kills him after distrusting his claims of kinship:

• InIrish medieval literature,the heroCú Chulainnkills his sonConlaí.
• In the Persian epic taleShahnameh,Rostamkills his son Sohrab.
• In a popular Rus'BylinaIlya Murometskills his son Podsokolnik.
• In a passage of theMahabharata,it is the son (Babruvahana) who kills his unidentified father (Arjuna), though the latter is later revived.
• In the lost ancient Greek epic poemTelegony,Odysseusis killed byTelegonus,his son byCirce.

The ending

While the conclusion of the Hildebrandslied is missing, the consensus is that the evidence of the analogues supports the death of Hadubrand as the outcome of the combat.Even though some of the later medieval versions end in reconciliation, this can be seen as a concession to the more sentimental tastes of a later period.Theheroicethos of an earlier period would leave Hildebrand no choice but to kill his son after the dishonourable act of the treacherous stroke. There is some evidence that this original version of the story survived into the 13th century in Germany: theMinnesängerDer Marnerrefers to a poem about the death of young Alebrand.

Origin and transmission

See also:Legends about Theoderic the Great

Origins

The poet of the Hildebrandslied has to explain how father and son could fail to know each other. To do so, he has set the encounter against the background of theDietrich legendbased on the life ofTheodoric the Great,an important subject inGermanic heroic legend.

Historically, Theodoric invaded Italy in 489, defeated and killed the ruling King of Italy, Odoacer, to establish his ownOstrogothic Kingdom.Theodoric ruled from 493 to 526, but the kingdom was destroyed by theEastern EmperorJustinian Iin 553, and thereafter the invading Lombards seized control ofNorthern Italy.By this time the story of Theodoric's conflict with Odoacer had been recast, contrary to historical fact, as a tale of Theodoric's return from exile, thus justifying his war on Odoacer as an act of revenge rather than an unprovoked attack.

In the Dietrich legend, Hildebrand is a senior warrior in Theodoric's army (in theNibelungenliedhe is specifically Dietrich's armourer). However, there is no evidence of a historical Hildebrand, and since names in -brandare overwhelmingly Lombard rather than Gothic, it seems certain that the tale of Hildebrand and Hadubrand was first linked with the legend of Theodoric's exile by a Lombard rather than a Gothic poet.However, attention has been drawn to the fact that one of Theodoric's' generals bore the nicknameIbba.While this could not have been a nickname forHildebrandamong the Goths, it might have been so interpreted later among the Lombards.

In the later re-tellings of the Dietrich legend, Theodoric is driven into exile not by Odoacer but byErmanaric(in historical fact a 4th century King of the Goths), which suggests that the earliest version of the Hildebrandslied was created when the legend still had some loose connection to the historical fact of the conflict with Odoacer. This first version of the story would probably have been composed some time in the 7th century, though it is impossible to tell how close it is in form to the surviving version.

Transmission

The oral transmission of a Lombard poem northwards to Bavaria would have been facilitated by the fact that theLangobardicandBavarian dialectswere closely related forms ofUpper German,connected via the Alpine passes. The two peoples were also connected by dynastic marriages and cultural contacts throughout the history of theLombard Kingdom.By the late 8th century, both the Lombard Kingdom and theDuchy of Bavariahad been incorporated into theFrankish Empire.

The evidence of the phonology of the Hildebrandslied is that the first written version of this previously oral poem was set down in Bavaria in the 8th century.

While Fulda was an Anglo-Saxon foundation located in theEast Franconiandialect area, it had strong links with Bavaria:Sturmi,the first abbot of Fulda, was a member of the Bavarian nobility, and Bavarian monks had a considerable presence at the monastery.This is sufficient to account for a Bavarian poem in Fulda by the end of the 8th Century. Fulda also had links with Saxony, evidenced by its missionary activity among the Saxons and the Saxon nobles named in the monastery's annals. This makes it uniquely placed for the attempt to introduce Saxon features into a Bavarian text, though the motivation for this remains a mystery.This Saxonised version then, in the 830s, served as the source of the surviving manuscript.

In summary, the probable stages in transmission are:

1. Lombard original (7th century)
2. Bavarian adaptation (8th century)
3. Reception in Fulda (8th century)
4. Saxonised version (c. 800?)
5. Surviving version (830s)

Motivation

A final issue is the motivation of the two scribes for copying the Hildebrandslied. Among the suggestions are:

• Antiquarian interest
• A connection withCharlemagne's impulse to collect ancient songs
• Interest in the legal questions the song raises
• A negative example, possibly for missionary purposes: the tragic result of adhering to outdated heroic rather than Christian ethics
• A commentary on the fraught relationship betweenLouis the Piousand his sons.

There is no consensus on the answer to this question.

References

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• Wiedemann, Konrad, ed. (1994).Manuscripta Theologica: Die Handschriften in Folio.Handschriften der Gesamthochschul-Bibliothek Kassel, Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel. Vol. 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. pp. 72–73.ISBN978-3447033558.Retrieved30 December2017.
• Wilkens, Frederick H (1897). "The Manuscript, Orthography, and Dialect of the Hildebrandslied".PMLA.12(2): 226–250.doi:10.2307/456134.JSTOR456134.S2CID163825214.
• Wolf, Norbert Richard (1981).Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, Band 1: Althochdeutsch - Mittelhochdeutsch(PDF).Uni-Taschenbücher. Vol. 1139. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer.ISBN3-494-02133-3.
• Young, Christopher; Gloning, Thomas (2004).A History of the German Language Through Texts.Abingdon, New York: Routledge.ISBN0-415-18331-6.

Sources

• Braune, Wilhelm; Ebbinghaus, Ernst A., eds. (1994). "XXVIII. Das Hildebrandslied".Althochdeutsches Lesebuch(17th ed.). Tübingen: Niemeyer. pp. 84–85.ISBN3-484-10707-3.Provides an edited text of the poem which is widely used and quoted. Line numbers for the text of theHildbrandsliedin modern scholarship generally refer to this work and its earlier editions.
• Bertelsen, Henrik (1905–1911).Þiðriks saga af Bern.Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur, 34. Copenhagen: S.L.Møller.Retrieved29 December2017.
• Broszinski, Hartmut, ed. (2004).Das Hildebrandlied. Faksimile der Kasseler Handschrift mit einer Einführung(3rd revised ed.). Kassel: Kassel University.ISBN3-89958-008-7.Most recent printed facsimile.
• Eckhart, Johann Georg von(1729)."XIII Fragmentum Fabulae Romanticae, Saxonica dialecto seculo VIII conscriptae, ex codice Casselano".Commentariis de rebus Franciae orientalis.Vol. I. Würzburg: University of Würzburg. pp. 864–902.Retrieved28 December2017.
• Grimm, Die Brüder (1812).Die beiden ältesten deutschen Gedichte aus dem achten Jahrhundert: Das Lied von Hildebrand und das Weißenbrunner Gebet zum erstenmal in ihrem Metrum dargestellt und herausgegebn.Cassel: Thurneisen.Retrieved20 January2018.
• Grimm, Wilhelm (1830).De Hildebrando, antiquissimi carminis teutonici fragmentum.Göttingen: Dieterich.Retrieved20 January2018.(the first facsimile)
• The Saga of Thidrek of Bern.Garland Library of Medieval Literature, Series B, 56. Translated by Haymes, Edward R. New York: Garland. 1988. pp. 65–77.ISBN978-0824084899.
• Meyer, Kuno (1904). "The Death of Conla".Ériu.1:113–121.JSTOR30007938.Translation reproduced at theCeltic Literature Collective
• Sievers, Eduard (1872).Das Hildebrandslied, die Merseburger Zaubersprüche und da Fränkische Taufgelöbnis mit photographischem Facsimile nach den Handschriften herausgegeben.Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses.Retrieved20 January2018.
• Steinmeyer, Elias von, ed. (1916).Die kleineren althochdeutschen Sprachdenkmäler.Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. pp.1–15.Retrieved25 January2018.

Further reading

• Willy Krogmann:Das Hildebrandslied in der langobardischen Urfassung hergestellt.106 p., Berlin 1959.

External links

• Wikisource Hildebrandslied
• Manuscript and transcription(Bibliotheca Augustana)
• English translation by Bruce McMenomy
• Text of first 26 lines with English translation and explanation of individual words
• Information about every word in the poem, including metrics, lemmatization, normalization and German translation
• English verse translation by Francis Wood
• Reading of the Lay of Hildebrand in Old High German and in a hypothetical Langobardic versionas reconstructed in 2013 byWolfram Euler,with subtitles in English.
• Summary and review of Popa's book on the recovery of the MS from the USA by Klaus Graf
• The Danish History/Book VII(English translation of theGesta Danorum)