Lost in the tempest of time? Treasures of >maere< and novellas in the 19th century

Based on the introduction to the Deutscher Novellenschatz, the essay explores some of the poetological metaphors, arguments and topoi by which the editors Heyse and Kurz shape their collection. While they bemoan the loss and decay of older traditions, short novellistic narratives of the German Middle Ages were quite present in contemporary editions, collections and commentaries. This discrepancy may result from strategies of displacement and revaluation, which are constitutive for the collection as >treasure< (Novellenschatz). It also raises methodological questions for the analysis of collections that seek to regulate their generic field in qualitative and quantitative terms.