The innovative recipe for success of Eleanor of Austria (ca. 1450-1460): How did Pontus und Sidonia reach the status of a bestseller?

Even though some of the fifteenth-century German prose novels have received critical attention, the genre itself altogether still suffers from being ignored, and major works have still not been appropriately analyzed. But a good number of those works enjoyed the status of besteller und superficially convey the impression of being nothing but sentimental and idealizing, not being particularly meaningful novels. Focusing on Pontus und Sidonia by Eleonore von Österreich such a judgment can be discredited by way of employing genuine evaluative criteria specific to the early modern age, which shed very different light on this novel and contemporary parallels. Admittedly, the protagonists do not go through any character development, but they function as role models, who point us into the direction of how the gender relationship, how political conditions, family relationships, and military operations ought to be dealt with and carried out in a reasonable fashion. Moreover, this novel mirrors innovative concepts of space and reflects also, at least indirectly, the new danger resulting from the Ottoman Empire threatening Christian Europe. It also conveys hope that this danger can be met effectively and successfully if the European warriors submit under the appropriate rules and Christian value system.