Otfrid von Weißenburg Memorial

As a monk and teacher at the Weißenburg monastery, he wrote the "Evangelienharmonie" in the new century AD, an epic in Old High German with end rhymes, and made Weißenburg the birthplace of German literature.
The town of Weißenburg erected a memorial to the monk and teacher Otfried by means of a sandstone sculpture embedded in the masonry on the north side of the tithe barn.

Abbot Grimold's secretary was called Otfried. Between 863 and 870 he wrote "Evangelienharmonie", also called "Krist". It is one of the most important Old High German poems, which claims to be the first epic written in German with end rhymes. The depiction is an epic narrative of the life of Christ using the Gospels. The verses that refer to the marriage of Cana show the full beauty of the poem.

There are four manuscripts of the above Manuscript collection (codex), of which one is in Munich, one in Heidelberg and one in Vienna. Fragments of it found a home in Wolfenbüttel. Unfortunately, Wissembourg does not have a code.

from: Weißenburg and a bit of world history / Une petite Histoire de Wissembourg by Walter Jäger

Otfrid von Weißenburg (* ca. 800 – † ca. 870) was a monk in the Abbey of Weißenburg and author of a gospel harmony in rhyming couplets, which is now referred to as the gospel book. It is written in the South Rhine-Franconian dialect of Old High German. The poem is believed to have been completed between 863 and 871.

Otfrid von Weißenburg (* around 790; † 875), more rarely also written Otfried, is the first Old High German poet known by name. The South Rhine Franconian dialect used in his writings suggests that the author came from the south of what is now the Palatinate.

It is significant that Otfrid told the gospel material in a language other than one of the three holy languages (Hebrew, Greek, Latin), namely in German (Franconian), and thus also pursued a language-political intention. For linguistics, he is considered the "progenitor of German literature".

In his Gospel Harmony, a text summarizing the four Gospels, Otfrid introduced the Romance final rhyme in place of the old Germanic alliteration, thus establishing a formal tradition that has endured to this day. After Otfrid, the end rhyme verse he uses is also known as Otfrid verse.
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