Money, power, poverty, and social criticism in the work of Heinrich der Teichner. A late-medieval poet challenges his world

With the growing number of complaints about the impact that money had on the everyday life of most people in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, critical mass seems to have been achieved for the impending paradigm shift away from the Middle Ages. The late fourteenth-century Austrian didactic poet Heinrich der Teichner proves to be a major spokesperson for those who deeply felt the negative consequences of a money-based economy and power structure. In his most prolific œuvre he voices vehement, complex, detailed, and biting criticism of money itself and of those who (ab)use money to achieve their personal goals to the disadvantage of everyone else.