The study takes as its subject the historical literary and cultural upheavals which led to the appearance of books of German literature in the vernacular. It examines them against the background of present-day theoretical discussions, taking critical account of the findings of international research on texts and manuscripts, and links these for the first time in the study of German-language works with approaches from paleography, codicology and general cultural history. The reliability of the evaluation is guaranteed by using an extraordinarily wide database – Wolf not only considers the whole of the German literature available in the vernacular from 12th and 13th century manuscripts, but also draws on a qualified selection of parallel texts in Latin and Old French.