Hienrich von Veldeke's Eneit is considered to be the first of the Middle High German Courtly Romances and to have inspired authors such as Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg and Wolfram von Eschenbach.
The Eneit is a German adaption of the French Roman d'Enéas, which in turn is also an adaption of Virgil's Aeneid. While Veldeke's version is much shorter than Virgil, it is never the less a very important book in the German literary canon and this first English prose translation by J. W. Thomas will no doubt be much sort after by readers of Gottfried and Wolfram's works.
Readers of the German romances, Minnesang poems and even the epic poems such as the Nibelungenlied will be immediately struck by the influence that this text has exercised on some of the later poems, certain episodes seem to be drawn straight out of the Eneit. At this point, it's probably best to let one of Veldeke's contemporaries speak on the value of Veldeke's Eneit;
Heinrich von Veldeke expressed himself with great skill. How well he sang of love and how beautifully he phrased his thoughts! I think he must have gotten his lore from Pegasus's fountain, the source of all knowledge. I did not know him myself, but hear him praised by the best poets, the masters of his time and of the present. They maintain that it was he who made the first graft on the tree of German verse and that the shoot put forth the branches and then the blossoms from which they took the art of fine composition. This craft has now spread so widely and become so varied that all who devise tales and songs can break off an ample supply of the twigs and blooms of words and music.
Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan.