As all the writings bear the marks of a single authorship it has been assumed that "the Friend of God" is a literary creation of Merswin.
[1] and that Merswin (and his school) produced the entire body of work as tendency literature designed to set forth the ideals of the movement to which he had given his life.
Thus "the great unknown" from the Oberland is the ideal character, "who illustrates how God does his work for the world and for the Church through a divinely trained and spiritually illuminated layman", just as William Langland in England about the same time drew the figure of Piers Plowman.
[2] Another theory is that Merswin had a dual personality and wrote the works ascribed to The Friend of God from the Oberland while in a dissociative state.
On Merswin's death, Nikolaus of Löwen came into a large collection of anonymous mystical works from the library of the Religious House of Grünenwörth, which he and Merswin had founded together, and invented the mysterious Friend of God from the Oberland as the author.