Interkulturelle Annäherung im Zeichen der Exogamie

Concerned about the royal succession, the powerful King Rother follows the advice of his nobles and sends a group of envoys to the foreign country of King Constantine to seek the hand of his beautiful daughter. This article aims to discuss the concept of ›dangerous courtship‹ as an intercultural contact scheme. It describes the relation between divergent communication practices and different forms of sovereignty. As a Middle High German text which does not address interculturality using the usual paradigms of demarcation (e.g. the interreligious dichotomy of Christians vs Heathens), König Rother reveals a broad spectrum of intercultural questions not yet discussed in the context of medieval narration.