Der arme Heinrich
Combining courtly and religious narrative patterns, it tells the story of a noble knight who has been stricken by God with leprosy and can be cured only by the heart's blood of a virgin who willingly sacrifices herself for his salvation.
He commands great material wealth and the highest social esteem, and embodies all knightly virtues and courtly behavior, including skills in the Minnesang.
At the famous Schola Medica Salernitana, a doctor informs him that the only cure is the life blood of a virgin of marriageable age, who freely sacrifices herself.
Despairing, without hope of recovery, Heinrich returns home, gives away the greater part of his worldly goods, and goes to live in the house of the caretaker of one of his estates.
As the doctor is about to cut out the girl's heart, Heinrich sees her through a chink in the door, naked and bound to the operating table, and intervenes.
He tells them that as he compared her beauty to his disfigured form, he became aware of the monstrosity of their undertaking, and, in a sudden change of heart, has accepted his leprosy as God's will.
Among other stories of supernatural cases and cures of leprosy are the legend of Pope Sylvester I, who was supposedly healed by Constantine the Great as well as the Amicus und Amelius of Konrad von Würzburg.
The poor system of transcription led to a number of inconsistencies and obscurities in the story, most of which have to do with the nameless farmer's daughter.
On the one hand it can be considered punishment for his worldly lifestyle—this is how Heinrich himself understands it and there is also a comparison with Absalom early in the work which support this reading.
The rhetorically masterful and theologically expert speech which she gives to Heinrich and her parents, convincing them to accept her sacrifice, is attributed to the Holy Ghost.
It is strikingly analogous to the form of the redemption fairy tale, but this genre lacks the religious themes that are predominant in Der Arme Heinrich.
Der Arme Heinrich is often referred to as having a novelistic character and is called a verse novel, but the term is generally only used for stories from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Its only contemporaries that share a genre are the anonymous middle high German verse romance Moriz von Craûn, in which Maurice II de Craon is the central character, and Wernher der Gartenære's Meier Helmbrecht.
"[3] Longfellow's poem was adapted into a very popular cantata of the same name by Arthur Sullivan with libretto by Joseph Bennett first performed in 1888.
