Eastern Europe and the Cultural Poetics of the Chivalric Tournament in Medieval Germany: Biterolf Und Dietleib, Ottokar von Steiermark's Osterreichische Reimchronik and Ludwig von Eyb's Turnierbuch‪.‬

I. Biterolf und Dietleib The mid-twelfth century anonymous German epic Biterolf und Dietleib divides the European continent into two hostile spheres: a southeastern sphere centered around the east European, "Hunnish" court of Etzel, and a northwestern sphere dominated by the Rhenish court at Worms. The text's representation of a pan-European war has generated considerable interpretive speculation among medieval Germanists. Is it a purely literary construction, or is it meant to reflect or refract contemporary geographic/political constellations, an east/west European divide? Representative of the former view, Michael Curschmann disregards any connection with actual history, considering the text "Dichtung uber Heldendichtung" in which the division of Europe develops a construction immanent to the epic tradition, a "Rivalitat der Sagenkreise" and "klare Polaritat nordwestlicher und sudostlicher Sagenwelten" that first appears in the Nibelungenlied, and is to be considered derivative thereof. (1) Fritz Peter Knapp, representing a more historically inclined group of scholars, interprets the poetic geopolitics of Biterolf as reflecting "eine gewisse Distanz zu traditionellen Machtzentren des Reichs und eine Ausrichtung auf Suden und Osten," which "einer politisch-okonomischen Neuorientierung der adligen Machthaber in den Landern Steiermark und Osterreich Ausdruck verleihen soll." (2)