There are 29 known manuscripts of Gottfried's Tristan, dating from the 13th to the 15th century. Of these 11 are complete.[1]
The unfinished Tristan was completed by two later poets, Ulrich von Türheim around 1235 and Heinrich von Freiberg around 1290, but their source for the latter part of the story is not Thomas's Tristan, and is generally thought to be the earlier and less courtly version of the story by Eilhart von Oberge, written around 1175. All but two of the complete manuscripts of Gottfried's work include a continuation by Ulrich or Heinrich; one uses the final part of Eilhart's work. Only one has no continuation at all.
Gottfried's work is praised by a number of later 13th-century writers, including Rudolf von Ems and Konrad von Würzburg, and was used, together with Eilhart von Oberge's version and Heinrich von Freiberg's continuation as a source for the Old Czech Tristan, written in the latter third of the 14th century.
While Gottfried's poem was still being copied in the 15th century, it was Eilhart von Oberge's less sophisticated narrative of the Tristan story that was the source of the first printed version, the 1484 Tristrant und Isalde, a work in prose which is not to be confused with the French Prose Tristan, also known as the Roman de Tristan en Prose.
Gottfried's work was rediscovered in the late 18th century, and is the source of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (1865).
