Middle High German literature refers to literature written in German between the middle of the 11th century and the middle of the 14th. In the second half of the 12th century, there was a sudden intensification of activity, leading to a 60-year "golden age" of medieval German literature referred to as the mittelhochdeutsche Blütezeit (c. 1170 – c. 1230). This was the period of the blossoming of Minnesang, MHG lyric poetry, initially influenced by the French and Provençal tradition of courtly love song. The same sixty years saw the composition of the most important courtly romances. again drawing on French models such as Chrétien de Troyes, many of them relating Arthurian material. The third literary movement of these years was a new revamping of the heroic tradition, in which the ancient Germanic oral tradition can still be discerned, but tamed and Christianized and adapted for the court.

The vernacular literature of the Old High German period, written in abbeys and monasteries, had been encouraged by the Carolingian dynasty in order to support the work of the church in recently Christianized lands. This eventually lost its urgency under the subsequent Ottonian and Salian emperors, and official promotion of the written vernacular lapsed. The result was a period of around 150 years, c. 900 – c. 1050, when there was almost no new writing in German.

By the middle of the 11th century, there was an increasing preference for German over Latin in writing in the courts, and Henry the Lion was just the first of the princes, in 1144, to establish his own court chancery. At the same time there was a growing audience among the nobility for literature in the vernacular (as was already happening in France and England).

The earliest works of this period, such as the Ezzolied and Annolied, were still the product of clerical authors with a biblical subject, but now directed towards a lay audience at the noble courts, rather than the clerical audience of the Old High German compositions.

By the middle of the 12th century, though, more secular works such as the Kaiserchronik ("The Imperial Chronicle") and the Alexanderlied introduced more worldly subject matter, though still within the religious world-view. In the same period, the love lyrics of the Danubian poets mark the start of the Minnesang tradition.

Under Frederick Barbarossa (ruled 1155–1190), political stability and increasing wealth encouraged the nobility to "assert its identity in activities that enhanced its visibility and prestige", among which were the patronage of vernacular literature, sponsoring new compositions, and the performance and copying of existing works. This new, largely secular literature introduced "new ways of thinking, feeling, imagining", seen in the courtly concerns with romantic love, the challenges and obligations of knighthood, and a striving for personal honour. Religious concerns were not lost, but the issue was now how to reconcile worldly and divine obligations.

From around 1170 Old French romances and the songs of the Provençal troubadours and French trouvères inspired MHG adaptations, which even from the start showed great independence from their sources. The following decades were a "golden age" (German Blütezeit), a sixty-year period which saw the creation of works recognized by both contemporaries and later generations as classics: the courtly romances of Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg and Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the songs of the Minnesänger, most notable among them Walther von der Vogelweide.

Also among these classics is the heroic epic the Nibelungenlied, which drew for form and subject matter on Germanic oral tradition rather than Romance models. Other types of narrative with connections to oral tradition in the broader MHG period are the earlier Spielmannsepen ("minstrel epics") and the later epics surrounding the legendary figure of Dietrich von Bern.