Four years after the publication of volume 12 (2020) of Filologia germanica - Germanic Philology, this volume renews the discussion on the Nachleben of the Germanic Middle Ages, the period in which vernacular literary traditions first emerged and on which medieval philologies are grounded. The Middle Ages, however, have always been marked by uncertain boundaries and shifting definitions, as early labels such as media aetas or media tempestas suggest. Coined within Renaissance Humanism as part of a self-conscious break with the past, the idea of a 'middle' age accompanied the classicist - and later Romantic - revival that reinterpreted medieval culture while redefining its distance from Antiquity, as the essays collected here seek to demonstrate.