MDT Ep. 92: Helmbrecht Begins, or How to Become a Robber Knight

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In this episode we learn how important good hair is to becoming a medieval cattle rustler with part one of the 13th-century poem Meier Helmbrecht.

Today’s Text

• Wernher der Gartenaere. Meier Helmbrecht. In Peasant Life in Old German Epics, translated by Clair Hayden Bell, Columbia UP, 1931. Archive.org.

References

• Bartlett, Robert. “Symbolic Meanings of Hair in the Middle Ages.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 4, 1994, pp. 43-60. JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/3679214.
• “How similar is Middle High German to Modern German?” Quora, 2017, www.quora.com/How-similar-is-Middle-High-German-to-Modern-German.
• Jones, George Fenwick. Honor in German Literature. U of North Carolina P, 1959. JSTOR,  www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469657608_jones.9.
• Seignobos, Charles. History of Mediæval Civilization. Translated by James Alton James, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910. Google Books.

Audio Credit: A Charlie Brown Christmas, United Feature Syndicate, 1965.

Image Credit: Detail from the Luttrell Psalter.