Friderich von Hûsen, twelfth-century Minnesinger, was a knight from Kreuznach in Rhine Franconia. He was in the entourage of the Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, and died on a crusade to the Holy Land on 6th May 1190. His surviving poetry, consisting of a corpus of love poems and a group of crusading songs, is preserved in two manuscripts in Middle High German. Professor Mowatt's edition comprises a diplomatic reprint of both manuscripts, together with introduction, commentary and glossary. The introduction offers a theoretical justification for this procedure by dealing in detail with the bases of the text, what is known about the poet, and the principles of interpretation and textual emendation. Professor Mowatt adopts a literary critical standpoint; the contributions of scholarship and textual criticism must be subordinates to and regulated by a critical analysis of the structure of the poems under consideration.
Prose translation of epic tale, best known to modern audiences as source for Wagner's Ring cycle, recounts the life and death of Sifrid (Siegfried), the dragon-slaying superman who can only be undone
