Albrecht von Halberstadt

Albrecht von Halberstadt, Middle High German poet, author of a verse translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, written probably in 1190, possibly in 1210 (a clumsy reference to date in the poem is ambiguous). Albrecht wrote it at Jechaburg near Sondershausen for the Thuringian court of Landgraf Hermann. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he has the merit of translating from the Latin original instead of a French intermediary, though the task taxes his poetic gifts. The poem is known through two fragments of a MS. (c.400 lines) and a considerably adapted version published more than three centuries later by J. Wickram in 1545.