THE NATIONAL CODE AS THE SEMANTIC CORE OF THE POEM “THE PEASANT HELMBRECHT” BY WERNHER DER GARTNAER

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the active research of the diachronic aspect of the problems of a new national (German) identity in the European social and cultural space and in the literary consciousness of the 19th-21st centuries. The article proposes to consider the poem by Wernher der Gartnaer “The Peasant Helmbrecht” not as a social and cultural product that addresses the issues of upward mobility and morals, but as an element of the mythic consciousness. Not only as a reworked story about the prodigal son but as an open opposition of types of thinking: archaic-mythical and linear. The opposition which is expressed in the ancient motive of the battle of the father and the son. The authors convince in ambiguity and infinity of ways to comprehend the medieval poem, to critically analyze the signs of the latest German reality in it.