At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Emperor Maximilian I commissioned Hans Ried, a customs official and scribe from Bolzano, to write down the 'Ambraser Heldenbuch.' The codex, comprising almost 250 parchment folios, is one of the most important sources of German narrative literature of the Middle Ages. The 'Ambraser Heldenbuch, ' which was created over a period of twelve years in the hand of one single scribe, is in many respects unique, first and foremost since 15 of its 25 texts have only survived in this manuscript.
In this eleven-volume complete transcription, all texts of the 'Ambraser Heldenbuch' appear for the first time in the original Early High German. This closes a large gap in philology, linguistics, and literary studies. A character-faithful transcription reproduces the exact allographs of the scribe as well as the line breaks of the manuscript. A parallel diplomatic transcription is arranged in verses and stanzas and numbered according to established editions. In addition, the corresponding scan of the manuscript in original size is synoptically juxtaposed with the transcriptions on facing pages for ease of orientation.
The complete transcription of the 'Ambraser Heldenbuch' is the first publication of the new open access series Transcriptiones.