Hartmann von Aue

After receiving a monastic education, he became retainer (Dienstmann) of a nobleman whose domain, Aue, has been identified with Obernau on the River Neckar.

Hartmann produced four narrative poems which are of importance for the evolution of the Middle High German court epic.

The result is that Hartmann's Erec introduces entirely different explanations for Guinevere's kidnapping, which do not correspond to what occurred in the shared literary tradition of Chretien's Arthurian romances.

His other two narrative poems are Gregorius, also an adaptation of a French epic, and Der arme Heinrich, which tells the story of a leper cured by a young girl who is willing to sacrifice her life for him.

Gregorius, Der arme Heinrich and Hartmann's lyrics, which are all fervidly religious in tone, imply a tendency towards asceticism, but, on the whole, Hartmann's striving seems rather to have been to reconcile the extremes of life; to establish a middle way of human conduct between the worldly pursuits of knighthood and the ascetic ideals of medieval religion.