The nine contributions collected in the habilitation thesis have as their common centre the question of the structure and function of sacred poetry in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. They have been written since 2016, i.e. over a period of 10 years, and form a coherent oeuvre with which a re-evaluation of the sacred songs of the Monk of Salzburg in particular is undertaken. The monk is specifically at the centre of the investigations because the most important new development in the field of Middle High German sacred song art around 1400 can be associated with his person, namely the orientation towards Latin liturgical poetry, and here this means primarily: the adaptation of Latin hymns, sequences and other liturgical chants. From a research perspective, this development raises numerous questions, such as: Why is there a reorientation away from the German towards the Latin tradition in the field of sacred poetry? How does the original function of the songs change when they are translated into the vernacular? What influence do the Latin models have on the overall style, and indeed on the linguistic composition of the reproductions?

Contributions on the plays of other authors of the same period (Bruder Hans, Oswald von Wolkenstein, Heinrich Laufenberg) flank the studies on the Mönch von Salzburg and serve to shed more light on problem areas that have become apparent in the examination of his songs. Firstly, other forms of editing beyond regular translations (Bruder Hans, Heinrich Laufenberg) with their effects on the linguistic constitution of the songs, for example through mixed-language phenomena (Bruder Hans, Heinrich Laufenberg), secondly, editing strategies in terms of content and their anchoring in biblical knowledge or in the contemporary understanding of piety (Bruder Hans) and thirdly, the shaping of the speaker's position, especially taking into account the question of the interaction between speaker design and usage situation (Bruder Hans, Oswald von Wolkenstein).