Volume 131, Issue 1

The paper explores the syntax of direct questions in Old High German (OHG) with particular reference to the placement of the finite verb and the interrogative element. It evaluates the complete OHG corpus and analyses the word order patterns taking into account the relevant loan-syntactic or metrical factors. The study shows that there is secure evidence allowing to retrace the emergence of V1 and V2 as the core patterns in alternative and constituent questions in modern German. In addition, the relation between the establishment of the V2-pattern in interrogatives and the consolidation of the V2-rule in main declarative clauses is discussed.

Recent scholarly consensus has seen the prologue to ›Parzival‹ as an attempt to introduce the audience to the difficulties of a previously unarticulated poetics of fiction and truth. This new reading likewise sees the prologue as a communication with the audience about the limits and possibilities of narrative, but situates Wolfram's images firmly within the context of contemporary epistemological debate and poetic positioning. The result is not a poetics of fiction, but an ontological reversal of the visible and experiential in relationship to truth, not hakenschlagender obscurantism, but a clearly delineated opposition between a layman's and a cleric's way of knowing.

Neidhart's songs were rewritten, varied and imitated for more than two centuries. In modern scholarship the search for the original for a long time blocked interest for and editions of possibly unauthentic texts. Now the new Salzburg edition presents the complete material, in large parts in synoptic layout. The article reviews this edition and discusses its principles. One text is edited in revised form.

This article focuses on the mediality of the Donaueschinger passion play, oscillating between textuality and performativity, rituality and theatrality. It argues that the play is composed as a reading text, regarding the speech, style and the narrative, poetological and exegetical character of its stage directions. In spite of its being intended to be read the passion play exhibits theatralic and liturgical elements, that allow to identify its literary genre. The detailed description of décor and actions on stage and even of the audience helps to imagine a performance, that exceeds the textual status of the manuscript. The text's performative dimension invites the reader to participate in contemplating Christ's passion and in worshiping him.