Storms, Shipwrecks, and Life-Changing Experiences in Late Medieval German Literature: From Oswald von Wolkenstein to Emperor Maximilian

Abstract

While the experience of shipwreck can almost be called archetypal, and while poets throughout time have placed their protagonists in such dangerous and life-threatening situations, we do not know much about how late-medieval German writers reflected on it. This article examines the motif of shipwreck and personal disaster in a number of heretofore little considered works, especially the poems by Oswald von Wolkenstein, those by Michel Beheim, Heinrich von Neustadt’s ‘Apollonius’, and Emperor Maximilian’s ‘Theuerdank’.