HELDENBUCH, DAS, the title under which a large body of German epic poetry of the 13th century has come down to us. The subjects of the individual poems are taken from na tional German sagas which originated in the epoch of the Migra tions (Volkerwanderung), although doubtless here, as in all purely popular sagas, motives borrowed from the forces and phenomena of nature were, in course of time, woven into events originally historical. The poems of the Heldenbuch belong to two cycles, (I) the Ostrogothic saga of Ermanrich, Dietrich of Bern (i.e., Dietrich of Verona, Theodoric the Great) and Etzel (Attila), and (2) the cycle of Hugdietrich, Wolf dietrich and Ortnit, which was probably of Franconian origin. Dietrich of Bern (q.v.) the cen tral figure of the more important group, was the ideal type of German mediaeval hero. Of the romances of this group, the chief are Biterolf and Dietlieb, evidently the work of an Austrian poet. Der Rosengarten tells of the conflicts round Keiemhild's "rose garden" in Worms—conflicts from which Dietrich always emerges victor, even when he is confronted by Siegfried himself. Laurin and der kleine Rosengarten deals with the adventures of Dietrich and his henchman Witege with the wily dwarf Laurin, who watches over another rose garden, that of Tyrol. Other ele ments of the Dietrich saga are represented by Alpharts Tod, Dietrichs Flucht, and Die RabensGhlacht ("Battle of Ravenna"). Of these, the first is much the finest poem of the entire cycle. The other two Dietrich epics belong to the end of the 13th cen tury—the author being an Austrian, Heinrich der Vogler—and show the decay that had by this time set in in Middle High Ger man poetry.
The second cycle of sagas is represented by several long ro mances, all of them unmistakably "popular" in tone. The epics of this group are Ortnit (q.v.), Hugdietrich, Wolf dietrich, (q.v.). Although many of the incidents and motives of this cycle are drawn from the best traditions of the Heldensage, its literary value is not very high.