The examination of historical images in selected works from the 16th century offers a fundamental insight into how the Early Modern Period related to the past, especially the High Middle Ages; it shows, among other things, the coexistence of both the continuation of tradition lines as well as deliberate breaks with tradition and the resulting 'new beginnings'. It contains the new editions of the Historia of Friedrich Barbarossa as well as of Georg Thym's didactic poem Thedel von Wallmoden, which are therefore available for the first time as basic material for further research in a critical edition, taking all the surviving prints into account.

Hans Sachs (1494–1576) is the most powerful German-language author of the 16th century with a body of work comprising more than 6200 songs. In recent decades, research on his rhyme and song poetry has been limited to individual studies and shorter summaries. At first, this volume presents the poetological foundations of his work. Sachs' own highly developed awareness of forms, genres, and themes sets the starting point for a presentation of his poetry according to text types in their sources, processing patterns, and in their direction in Nuremberg, which was becoming Protestant, and Germany. The different medial realizations in writing, picture and imagery, reading and singing give a diversified face to the texts from ancient, biblical and medieval tradition, which are made accessible here in an overview and by examples.

Das Thema Krieg wird seit einiger Zeit in mehreren geisteswissenschaftlichen Disziplinen stark beachtet. Der vorliegende Band enthält 14 Aufsätze, in denen die Darstellung und Wahrnehmung von Kriegen vom 12. bis 17. Jahrhundert aus der Sicht unterschiedlicher Fächer (Japanologie, Theologie, Geschichte, Altgermanistik, Rechtsgeschichte, Osteuropageschichte) behandelt wird.

By choosing the example of the Polish-Lithianian Commonwealth in the 16th century, Markus Osterrieder examines continuities and transformations in the perception, description and evaluation of images of peace, war and hostility. The study reflects the whole European context and is based on an approach in mental and consciousness history. General mental and social changes are either discussed in form of evolutionary changes or of anthropological constants. The study offers also a substantial contribution to the debate on the fixation of the border between the Middle Ages and Modern Times in Eastern Europe as well as on the position of Eastern Europe in the Europe of the Humanism, Renaissance and Reformation.

Die sechs überlieferten illustrierten mittelalterlichen „Parzival“-Handschriften werden in dieser Arbeit untersucht. Nach einer Darstellung von Überlieferung, Datierung, Aufbewahrung, Schrift, Texteinrichtung und Ausstattung der Codices folgt eine Charakterisierung des künstlerisches Ausdrucks der Bilder. Die Analyse beschäftigt sich zum einen mit Technik, Zeichen- und Malstil sowie Koloristik, zum anderen mit der Darstellungsweise in den Kategorien Person, Tier, Architektur, Landschaft und Komposition. Ziel der Bestandsaufnahme ist die Herausarbeitung der stilistischen Merkmale der verschiedenen Bildversionen der „Parzival“-Handschriften. Der zweite Schwerpunkt liegt auf der Untersuchung der Text-Bild-Beziehungen. Eine Synopse der Bebilderungssysteme und ihrer szenisch-inhaltlichen oder ikonographischen Beziehungen weist verschiedene Bildtraditionen nach.

Musical instruments played a represantative role in the splendid courtly world of the 13th century. The author treats nearly all the names of musical instruments which occur in the texts of courtly novels from the perspectives of literary studies, art history and musicology.

The present study is the first to examine in detail a representative corpus of the tragedi and comedi with female protagonists written by the Nuremberg author Hans Sachs. On the basis of a precise reconstruction of the intertextual frame of reference of each of the plays, taking into account both the enormously diverse literary sources and Sachs’ own topically related poems in the form of master songs and narrative poems, the author’s dramaturgical methods are explored more precisely. The "serious" drama in particular turns out to be a formidable virtual arena for exhibiting creative female attributes and the female potential for action, bringing out frequently subliminal contradictions to the normative claim to validity of the attached moral instruction. Conversely, in other cases, the moral message also ties in with the literary discourse, for example by tracing female vices back to male misconduct. Seen as a whole, the author's attempt to negotiate new, more reciprocally conceived ways of dealing with the sexes within the framework of the Lutheran-patriarchal marriage model and the socio-political order that it supports becomes apparent.

Reinmar von Zweter is the most important Sangspruch poet between Walther von der Vogelweide and Frauenlob. Within German poetry of the time, the transmission of his works is unique in two ways. A systematic collection of his Sangsprüche must have taken place during his lifetimes, and the fragments of his ‚Leich‘-poem, from the 13th century, are older than any other manuscript of the genre. In a detailed analysis of the manuscripts, changing attitudes towards this oeuvre can be perceived. Each manuscript creates a certain image of the poet. The author portrait in the ‘Codex Manesse’ and the fictional character 'Reinmar' in the 'Wartburg Contest' can be considered as further aspects of perception. The literary study of the main body of Reinmars Sangsprüche opens up new perspectives on the oeuvre and on the innovations within.