‘Religious identity’ will be regarded as the homogeneous whole of religious attitudes and religions and ethical actions which are rooted in the mentality of a person/a community: (1) this identity may exist in different stages of awareness; (2) the tension between the mentality of a person and of a community may be strong or nearly non-existent; and (3) religious attitudes and ethical actions may be closely tied or only loosely connected. (...) The awareness of religious identity is marked in the ‘Rolandslied’ by affirmation, in the ‘Willehalm’ by problematisation. (...).
A tension between subjective and collective mentality is non-existent in the ‘Rolandslied’, whereas in the ‘Willehalm’ it is relatively strong without breaking up the integration of the subject into the nobility. (...) Religious attitudes and political actions (...) strongly diverge in both works on an objective level; however, this is not the case for the ‘Rolandslied’ on a subjective level. The ‘Willehalm’ testifies to a process of a subjectivisation and individualisation which can be termed typical for the twelfth century and which is to be found in various cultural areas.