”“The unsurpassed heuristic work of medieval German studies - indispensable for all medieval disciplines including even the history of medicine. The work not only extensively documents the current state of research within the defined framework, the changes in the articles between Vol. 1 and Vol. 11 reveal how research and presentation methods have become more precise. That is why this lexicon also has high historical value for the discipline, which would be worth investigating - and this will surely occur one day.”
Prof. Dr. Johannes Janota
“This basic, comprehensive reference work on the literature of the medieval German language area has had a sustained impact on medieval research since the publication of the first volume in 1978, e.g. through the obligatory inclusion and presentation of the facts on how these writings were handed down.”
Prof. Dr. Kurt Gärtner
With a total of some 5000 alphabetically arranged articles, the ‘Dictionary of Authors’ presents the whole of medieval German literature. In its organisation, the work carries on from the first edition (1933-1955); it is, however, broader in scope and has been completely reworked by numerous international scholars to represent (and often to establish) the present state of research.
The term ‘literature’ as used here encompasses all writing with the exception of archival records, and thus includes not only ‘belles-lettres’ but also practical and occasionally ecclesiastical, legal, historical, scientific, medical, technical and commercial texts. The dictionary contains all known authors writing in German with their works, a broad selection of authors from the German language area writing in Latin, and all prominent anonymous works. Less prominent German anonymous works are included in articles on representative manuscript collections, on the reception of important Latin authors from Antiquity and the Middle Ages in translation, quotation and glossaries, and in some cases feature in wide-ranging thematic overviews. In all the articles, particular importance is attached to an account of the transmission of the works.