Hildebrandslied
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The Hildebrandslied is a heroic lay written in Old High German alliterative verse. It is the earliest poetic text in German, and it tells of the tragic encounter in battle between a father (Hildebrand) and a son (Hadubrand) who does not recognize him. It is the only surviving example in German of a genre which must have been important in the oral literature of the Germanic tribes.
The first page of the Hildebrandslied manuscript
The second page of the Hildebrandslied manuscript
The text of the Hildebrandslied in Braune's Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, 8th edition, 1921
Grimm's 1830 facsimile of the first page of the Hildebrandslied. Some damage from the use of chemical reagents is already apparent, but much more was to follow.
Old High German
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Old High German is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous West Germanic dialects that had undergone the set of consonantal changes called the Second Sound Shift.
First page of the St. Gall Codex Abrogans (Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 911), the earliest text in Old High German