Hartmann von Aue

Hartmann von Aue was a Swabian knight and one of the great poets of the Middle High German court epic, ranked with Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg. He introduced the Arthurian romance into German in his Erec and Iwein, adapting Chrétien de Troyes, and also wrote the legends Gregorius and Der arme Heinrich, together with courtly love lyrics. His dates are uncertain: he was active from about 1180 to about 1200 and is thought to have died c. 1210.

Der arme Heinrich (“Poor Henry”) tells of a nobleman struck with leprosy, who can be cured only by the willing death of a maiden. Dante Gabriel Rossetti translated it in verse as a young man in 1846, under the title Henry the Leper; it was not published until his Collected Works of 1886.