The Nibelungs
Ferdinand Schmidtpossessed a great treasure; lied, song or ballad), one of the world’s greatest
epics, made its appearance in the twelfth or thirteenth century, in South
Germany. Its authorship is unknown. The writer, however, did not
produce an original work, but made use of still earlier legends which had
been handed down orally. The Nibelungen Lied is to be regarded,
therefore, as a collection of ballads skilfully united so as to form a
connected story. Its hero is Siegfried, who possessed the Nibelung hoard,
which he won in Norway. Siegfried wooed Brunhild for Günther, King of
Burgundy, and married the king’s sister, Kriemhild. He was treacherously
slain by Hagen and the hoard was sunk in the Rhine. Kriemhild
subsequently was married to Etzel (Attila), King of the Huns, and slew
Hagen after he had been overcome in combat, but lost her own life at the
hands of the “ancient,” Hildebrand. Both historical and mythical elements
are mingled in this great poem, which should not be confounded with
Wagner’s “Ring der Nibelungen,” in which he has taken many names from
the German epic. The material for his famous music-dramas he found in
the old Norse version, contained in the Volsunga Saga and the Edda.
The Nibelungen Lied was followed by many similar epics, among them
“Gudrun,” “The Expedition of Ecken,” the tale of “King Laurin,”
“Rosengarten,” and others, but The Nibelungen Lied is the greatest of all
the German national traditions. One writer, in his description of the poem,
says:
“Feudal loyalty and martial courage were the great virtues of
these heroes. The poem contains a tale of revenge; but all the
plot turns on the principle of loyalty, in obedience to which
thousands lost their lives in a quarrel which had at first
involved only two or three leading characters. Though this
singular poem contains many traits of a warlike age, and closes
with terrible scenes of carnage, it displays hardly a trace of
such a
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