Otfrid of Weissenburg. – Benedictine monk, born in Alsace around 790, died in 870. A disciple of Rabanus Maurus, he later became head of the monastic school at Weissenburg. He authored a Gospel harmony in the Franconian dialect of the Upper Rhine, which he entitled *Liber evangeliorum D. g. theodisce conscriptus*, also known as *Krist*, a name given to it by E. G. Graff.
The work consists of five books, corresponding to the five senses through which sin enters man, drawing from the Gospels with the usual adaptations to the local environment and customs, and including frequent moral reflections and considerations. The historical significance of the work, which reveals more of the theologian and scholar than the poet, lies in its form, as Otfrid is the creator of a verse form that remained the dominant type in German poetics for two or three centuries: it consists of two half-lines, each with four stressed syllables and an indefinite number of unstressed syllables, linked by rhyme, which here for the first time replaces the characteristic Germanic alliteration. Of the languages, Otfrid is, after the remote Uffila, the first known German writer whose name has come down to us.