LAMPRECHT, called «DER PFAFFE» (the Priest). - German poet of the first half of the 12th century, author of a poem on the life of Alexander the Great, composed on the basis of the French original by Alberico da Besançon, which he freely and skilfully reworked.
In the two parts of which the poem consists, preserved in two versions of differing length, there are fantastically narrated the youth, education, and great wars won by the Macedonian, as well as the fabulous marvels of the East, whither his unbridled pride as a conqueror drove him, down to the vain attempt to conquer Paradise; this latter undertaking has the effect of bringing Alexander back to himself, teaching him that blessedness is attained only through humility and that self-restraint is the supreme wisdom of life. L., whose work is the first secular epic composition in the German language dependent
upon a foreign source, and in which the influence of the style of popular epic is evident, may be numbered among the earliest precursors of chivalric poetry in Germany.