ABSTRACT
A bishopric was founded in Naumburg in the early eleventh century. The thirteenth-century bishops, including Bishop Engelhard, held considerable power in medieval Naumburg and were able to marshal the resources necessary to begin construction of a new cathedral. Probably the best-known building from medieval Naumburg is the cathedral, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, originally constructed about 1050 and rebuilt in the thirteenth century to incorporate the burial church of Count Ekkehard, which originally stood to the cathedral's west. Medieval architecture in Naumburg includes the original parts of churches dedicated to St. Moritz and St. Wenzel and a hospital dedicated to Mary Magdalen, which was erected by 1144. The Nibelungenlied, which has intrigued both the medieval listener and the modern scholar with its complex origins, purposeful structure, psychologically credible yet sometimes contradictory characters, and dramatic denouement, continues to inspire diverse and original scholarly interpretation.
