There is basis for believing that the poem is about an actual, historical Helmbrect family. In the poem, mention is made of the location of a spring: "No equally good spring I know Except the Wanghaus spring so clear, But no one brings its waters here." There is but one place known by the name of Wanghausen, and its mention afforded the best starting point for determining the locality in which the action occurs. It lies on the east side of the Salzach river, in Austria, opposite the Bavarian hamlet Burghausen. There is today still a spring in Wanghausen which, because of the excellent water it furnishes, is called by the native folk das goldene Brünnlein. Having discovered a Helmbrecht Farm in legal records of the thirteenth century, scholars succeeded in locating the actual farm in the neighborhood of Wanghausen, some six kilometers east of Burghausen on the edge of the Weilhart forest. This holding was up to the end of the 1800's called the Helmbrechtshof.

Even for the peasant Ruprecht of the poem, documentary record of a contemporary, Ruperth von Schitir, have been found. The farms Schiderer and Groszschieder which lie southeast of the ancient Helmbrecht farm may have been his holdings. Near at hand is the Reuter spring, the only one in the region with good water, justifying father Helmbrecht’s comparison of it with the Wanghausen spring. Hohenstein is the Hohenberg, near Burghausen, and Haldenberg is perhaps identical with the hill Adenberg, lying not far away in the opposite direction from the Helmbrecht farm. Near the farm there stretches a forest such as is featured in the poem, the Weilhart.

In the early 20th century, at a distance of an hour’s walk, in the midst of this forest, there stood a huge linden tree, and under it a little chapel, the Weisse Schacher. Scholars found a legend still in circulation among the peasant folk, that it marked the spot where a soldier who had run away from his parents in order to lead a dissolute life was once hanged. As the decades and centuries passed after the disappearance of knights, popular tradition may easily have changed the follower of the robber knight into a soldier. The chapel as it once stood dated from a later time than that of the poem; yet it is not improbable that relatives of the hanged man originally constructed the chapel, inviting passers-by to say a paternoster for the salvation of the sinner on the spot of his execution. Many of the unusual expressions occurring in the poem have found explanation in the language and customs of the region studied. One of the investigators found in 1865 an old peasant, Lindl, who recollected that in his youth he had seen in the nearby monastery Ranshofen (abandoned in 1811) a book, with illustrations, about a ‘robber chieftain Helm’ from Gilgenberg.

The first definite literature reference to the poem Meier Helmbrecht is found in Ottokar’s Reimchronik (about the year 1310), where certain peasants, in refusing military service, appeal as their justification to the teachings of father Helmbrecht. These bits of evidence set the date of our poem at about the middle of the thirteenth century.

As for the author Wernher the Gardener whom we have to thank for our narrative, there is no positive knowledge whatever save the fragment of information which he gives us in the last line of his poem; here he announces his identity as Wernher der Gartenaere, a name not recorded elsewhere. All else is more or less uncertain inference, based upon the nature and contents of the poem.

The language of the poem indicates either Bavarian or Austrian origin. One theory, that Wernher was a ‘pater’ gardener in the Augustinian monastery Ranshofen which stood some two hours’ distance north of the Helmbrecht farm, has found considerable favor. This ‘pater’ gardener, so runs the theory, not only supervised the extensive agricultural holdings of the monastery, but also instructed the peasants of the region in the arts of horticulture. In line with this duty, he was called upon to travel about from farm to farm, and in this close contact with the folk life in which the Helmbrecht story has its setting, he may have witnessed the events of the story at first hand or have heard them from the peasants of the region. This would also explain the poet’s thorough and detailed familiarity with the geography of the locality in which the action takes place. He knew the region on the lower Inn River so minutely that he must either have grown up there or have dwelt there long in later life.

It is from the clerical class, then, that the sympathetic attitude shown toward the peasant in Meier Helmbrecht might be expected. Another scholar, although rejecting the theory that Wernher was a ‘pater’ gardener, presents the hypothesis that he was a wandering member of the Franciscan Order. He points out what may be regarded as Franciscan characteristics in the speech which Wernher puts into the mouth of the old Meier, and he somewhat convincingly argues away the difficulties which have been raised against the monk theory. Certainty upon this point, however, cannot be attained: we must rest content that for the present at least there is not sufficient evidence in hand to decide the matter. Wernher may possibly have been a knight or a wandering minstrel; more likely he was an itinerant monk, or even, as one argument goes, a ‘pater’ gardener.