Treasures do not only prove their value through their impressive size, external splendor or expensive furnishings. Medieval manuscripts can also display downright lavish decoration or - since their format is in most cases determined by their content and intended use - reach impressive sizes of up to 50 centimeters.
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The Prussian State Library of Cultural Heritage has now succeeded in purchasing a medieval manuscript that, in terms of its external appearance, appears small, narrow and inconspicuous, but whose literary and cultural-historical significance cannot be overestimated. It can already be said that the State Library has made an extremely valuable new acquisition that opens up new perspectives for Germanic medieval research.
The manuscript was previously unknown. It contains three verse narratives, two of which can be described as "fairy tales" and one as a "miracle" or miracle story. Both text types belong to the large and very varied group of small epic texts of the Middle Ages, which, like fables, novellas or legends, were extremely popular and widespread well into modern times.
The definition, text affiliation and appropriateness of the term "Tale" as a genre term are highly controversial in German studies, but some criteria have now been agreed upon. According to these, Tales are narrative texts that were extremely popular from the 13th to the 15th century. They are written in rhyming couplets, i.e. bound in meter, and are characterized by their brevity, which makes them clearly different from novels or didactic poems. In terms of content, they place a striking emphasis on all conceivable problems of marriage and adultery, love and sexuality, cunning deception and violence between the sexes.
The social milieu can be coded as feudal-courtly, but can also relate to urban-bourgeois or rural-rural contexts. This is particularly interesting because it breaks through the feudal-noble exclusivity of the heroic epic, such as the "Nibelungenlied", or the courtly novel of Hartmann von Aue or Wolfram von Eschenbach, and broadens the social spectrum. It is also striking that this social expansion is discussed in the tales in terms of questions of sexuality and marriage.