page_title: Rosengarten zu Worms
section_title: Metrical form
hierarchical_section_title: Rosengarten zu Worms / Metrical form
caption_attribution_description: Berliner Rosengartenspiel SB Berlin mgf 800, Bl. 2v: Kriemhild überreicht Dietleib und Walther je einen Rosenkranz
context_page_description: Der Rosengarten zu Worms, sometimes called Der große Rosengarten to differentiate it from Der kleine Rosengarten, and often simply called the Rosengarten, is an anonymous thirteenth-century Middle High German heroic poem in the cycle of Dietrich von Bern. The Rosengarten may have been written as early as before 1250, but is securely attested by around 1300. It is unclear where it was written.
  While it combines characters from the traditions of the Nibelungenlied, Walter of Aquitaine, and the Dietrich cycle, the Rosengarten is usually considered one of the so-called fantastical poems about Dietrich: these poems more closely resembles a courtly romance than traditional heroic epic. Occasionally, because it features Dietrich fighting against human opponents rather than giants or dwarfs, it is grouped together with the similar poem Biterolf und Dietleib as a separate group of Dietrich poems.
  Scholars count four or five versions of the Rosengarten. The poem concerns a fight between the heroes of the cycle around Dietrich von Bern with those from the Nibelungen saga, which takes place in a rose garden at the city of Worms.
context_section_description: The Rosengarten is composed, like most German heroic poems, in stanzas. The stanza used in the Rosengarten is the so-called "Hildebrandston", a variant of the stanza used in the Nibelungenlied in which all the lines are of the same length. Each line consists of three metrical feet, a caesura, and three additional feet. The following example from Alpharts Tod can illustrate:
  Also der lyechte morgen || an den hymel kam,
  da stont vff myt sorgen || der forst lobesam,
  der degen küne, || als jne dye sorge betzwang.
  wan jm dye helde kemen, || dye wile was jm lang.
  Several versions use a variant of this stanza called the "Heunenweise" or "Hunnenweise" (the Hunnish melody), in which there are always rhymes at the mid-line caesura. This variant can also be understood to be made up of eight short verses, taking the caesuras as line endings.
caption: Dietleib and Walther both receive a garland of roses from Kriemhild. Image from a text of the Berlin Rosengarten play, SB Berlin mgf 800, Bl. 2v.
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