Otfrid of Weissenburg

Summary

THE MOST SIGNIFICANT FIGURE in the early history of German literature is the Benedictine monk Otfrid (sometimes Otfried) of Weissenburg, author of the Evangelienbuch (Gospel Book). He lived from around 800 until around 875 and completed his major work toward the end of his life between 863 and 871 in the monastery at Weissenburg, now known as Wissembourg, in the northeast of France. His poetic retelling of the gospel story consists of 7,104 lines of Old High German, packaged in sections with Latin headings taken mainly from the Bible, and provided with additional introductory pieces, one in Latin prose and three in Old High German verse. The dialect he used is known as South Rhenish Franconian, a variety that he himself would call theotisce (German[ic]) or frenkisgon (Frankish). The fact that the poem is free composition and paraphrase rather than a direct translation from the Latin Vulgate Bible or any other source makes it particularly interesting for philologists studying the beginnings of the German language and its literature. Its considerable length provides a useful range of vocabulary and grammatical features, showing how the early German language had begun to integrate new Christian terminology and concepts into its traditions, sometimes using the old heroic words with slightly different meanings, and at other times adopting new words from the Greek or Roman Christian domains. Moreover, the Evangelienbuch has also survived intact in several well preserved manuscripts, which makes textual study comparatively straightforward when one considers the precarious and often fragmentary state of most other contemporary vernacular texts.