Lay of Hildebrand

The Lay of Hildebrand (Das Hildebrandslied) is a heroic lay, written in Old High German alliterative verse. It is one of the earliest literary works in German, and it tells of the tragic encounter in battle between a son and his unrecognized father. It is the only surviving example in German of a genre which must have been important in the oral literature of the Germanic tribes.

Read more about Lay Of Hildebrand:  Synopsis, The Text, The Manuscript, The Dialect, Analogues & The Ending, The Historical Background

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    Witness the American ideal: the Self-Made Man. But there is no such person. If we can stand on our own two feet, it is because others have raised us up. If, as adults, we can lay claim to competence and compassion, it only means that other human beings have been willing and enabled to commit their competence and compassion to us—through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, right up to this very moment.
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