SOURCE: “Hagen: A Negative View,” Semasia, Vol. 2, 1975, pp. 43-59.

[In the following essay, Dickerson argues against viewing Hagen as heroic, contending instead that he should be regarded as an evil character.]

Much progress has been made in recent years toward a modern and comprehensive view of the Nibelungenlied. The pioneering studies of D. W. Mowatt,¹ Hugh Sacker² and Hugo Bekkar³—to choose only three—have suggested new solutions to the problem of the work's inconsistencies which up to now have either been left unexplained or attributed to the “postulate” that the poet was courtly but his subject matter was not.⁴ The new discoveries that the poem deals with entire social groups rather than individuals,⁵ that it depicts a world fragmented by the intrusion of foreign elements,⁶ that irony⁷ and “self-referential patterns”⁸ play an important role in structure have made it possible to view these inconsistencies in a new light, to see them no longer as lapses and defects but as integral parts of the poet's method. The apparent inconsistency in the figure of Hagen von Tronege is a case in point.

Of all the inhabitants of Worms, Hagen is the most problematic. We have no choice, it seems, but to accept the idea of two Hagens: the murderer of the first part who stabs Siegfried in the back and the hero of the second who singlehandedly becomes “der trôst der Nibelunge” (1726,4).⁹ But if the Nibelungenlied is as great as we think it is, “a literary monument worthy to be read for its own sake,”¹⁰ then the idea of two Hagens or two Kriemhilds is unacceptable and requires a better explanation than simply the poet's inability to “unite two stories which once were separate.”¹¹

With Hagen one of the chief difficulties is that almost any interpretation of his personality, even those which are diametrically opposed, contain an element of truth. He certainly is “over-weening”¹² and endowed “mit einem besonderen Sinn für die Nachtseiten des Daseins;”¹³ and a case canbe made for him as a “responsible statesman”¹⁴ who shows “intelligent initiative”¹⁵ in his political decisions. But then Hagen also has the earmarks of a megalomaniac, “[ein] ichbesessener Außenseiter”¹⁶ but one, it seems, with “rare qualities”¹⁷ who in that emotional shield scene with Rüdeger appears truly to undergo “eine sittliche Vertiefung.”¹⁸

The main reason for these contradictory assessments is that traditionally scholars have attempted to find something positive in Hagen. This is due, no doubt, to the position of the Nibelungenlied as a national epic where ideologues from Felix Dahn to Hermann Goering have seen in Hagen the archetype of Teutonic virtue and loyalty.¹⁹ For the poet's contemporaries, however, this was not the case. In the *C version, for example, Hagen is referred to explicitly as “der mordaer Hagene” and “ir morder ungetriuwer;”²⁰ and in the Klage, he is condemned outright: “[Hagen] ist nu komen an die stat / dâ uns sîn übermuot / nu vil kleinen schaden tuot.”²¹ The point is that scholars should not automatically assume that the author of the Klage, because of his moralizing tone, failed to appreciate hagen's significance in the Nibelungenlied. As many have pointed out,²² the opinions of the times must be taken into consideration. Thus to make a hero out of Hagen, this drinker of human blood, who leads an entire people to destruction, is, as Helmut Brackert points out, “[eine] Verfälschung der Dichtung,”²³ a good example of what Sacker calls forcing the poem to conform to a “preconceived idea of what it ought to be.”²⁴

One preliminary observation to be made about Hagen is that his true protagonist is not Siegfried, with whom he has been too closely linked,²⁵ but Kriemhild. Even a cursory reading reveals that their roles are both parallel and complementary. Despite the importance of Brunhild, it is Kriemhild who dominates the first part while Hagen remains in the background only to emerge later when he kills Siegfried and sinks the hoard into the Rhine. In the second part it is Hagen who has center stage while Kriemhild remains behind the scenes until she kills Hagen and in turn is killed by Hildebrant. This is not to say that the other figures are not important; but if the action of the poem is reduced to its simplest terms, it turns out to be primarily the story of Hagen and Kriemhild. Kriemhild, however, is the less problematic of the two.

The “minneclîche meit” (3) at the beginning of the poem who becomes the “vâlandinne” (1748/2371) at the end certainly has more than her share of human faults. Spoiled, egoistic and possessive, she is, like the other characters of the Nibelungenlied, best “viewed from a distance.”²⁶ But it is precisely because of these faults that she is credible and, as Schröder says, a human being of “flesh and blood”²⁷ who truly becomes a tragic figure. She has, after all, unwittingly helped to kill the only person she has ever loved. And there is no need to doubt, I think, that Kriemhild loved Siegfried for his person and not for his power and prestige.²⁸ The fact that she retreated from her original resolve never to fall in love (15) shows that she must have had a change of heart when Siegfried appeared on the scene. As Hugo Bekker suggests, her situation is like Isolde's and she might just as well “have drunk a love potion.”²⁹

Kriemhild is a woman so in love, so smitten with Siegfried, that, give her limitations as a human being, she goes completely insane when Siegfried is murdered. We cannot expect from a medieval poet a clinical analysis of her mental collapse; what we get instead is a moving account of her grief which culminates in her tears of blood (1069). The “sacramental” significance of this phenomenon has been treated elsewhere;³⁰ but it is also possible to see in these tears, by the very intensity of the image they evoke, the precise moment when Kriemhild's mind snaps under the strain of her grief. The brutal murder, the discovery of the body thrown callously before the door, the tears of blood, the final opening of the casket—all this was intended by the poet to move his courtly audience and to demonstrate, as Schröder aptly puts it, that Kriemhild's grief hat “einen wahren, innerseelischen Charakter.”³¹ If the story of Kriemhild is the story of a woman gone mad, then there is no inconsistency in her development. The murderous psychopath we see at the end is the same selfish young woman we saw at the beginning of the poem who thought she could avoid both liebe and leit (15). To use Schröder's words, “daβ die Rächende eine Leidende war und ist, daβ die Leidende eine Liebende war und ist, konstituiert die Einheit der Person wie der Dichtung.”³² The cause of all this grief and madness is Hagen von Tronege; and his case requires more explanation.

.....

To begin, Hagen is both uncourtly and an outsider at Worms. I say this not because of his origins in the Germanic legends, but because of the chasm that separates him from such courtly types as Siegfried and Gunther. Siegfried, despite his pre-courtly beginnings, is the courtly hero par excellence whose every move is “an interesting game,” an “elaborate frolic.”³³ For Hagen however, courtly appearances mean nothing. The mere fact that he can kill Siegfried in a way reserved for animals³⁴ and then throw the body unceremoniously in front of Kriemhild's door reveals, to say the least, a total disregard for courtly convention. This is not to say that Hagen never plays the courtly role,³⁵ but when he does, it is always with an ulterior motive as, for example, in Island where he prefers to stay with the ladies (531) while Siegfried goes to Worms as a messenger. The idyllc scene at Bechelaren, usually considered a high point in Hagen's humanity and courtliness,³⁶ is a case in point. His seemingly well intended suggestion that Rüdeger's daughter and Giselher marry conceals a darker motive than merely his knowledge that such a marriage involving Kriemhild's favorite brother would work to the advantage of the Burgundians.³⁷ On the contrary, the exact opposite is the case: by effecting an alliance between Worms and Bechelaren, Hagen makes it impossible for Rüdeger to break his oath of layalty to Kriemhild (1265ff.), thus assuring the destruction not only of the Burgundians but of Rüdeger and his men as well. In that agonizing scene where Rüdeger pleads with Kriemhild to be released from his oath, he uses the planned marriage of his daughter and Giselher as his trump card but to not avail (2161). Hagen has seen to it that his “saving clause”³⁸ about his honor (1266,4) is of no use to him. This is not to say that Hagen had in mind Rüdeger's oath to Kriemhild when he made the marriage proposal at Bechelaren. The truth of the matter is that we never know what Hagen is thinking. We can only agree with Bekker that the poet's “allusion to the girl's fate [1680] suggests that Hagen with his proposal is the agent who brings about the fulfillment of what the poet calls inevitable.”³⁹

Even when Hagen lies, he does so for reason entirely different from the others at Worms. When Gunther, for example, deceives Siegfried about the Saxon war (884), he has in mind only the preservation of worldly values, in this case, courtly appearances and his reputation as a king. Like Siegfried, when for some unknown reason he gave Brunhild's ring and belt to Kriemhild, Gunther has no idea of the consequences of his acts. The possible ramifications of a murdered Siegfried simply never enter his mind. This is not the case with Hagen: his lies and deceptions lead paradoxically to a truth that points far beyond the exigencies of daily life at court.⁴⁰ When he denies killing the fairy man (1568), for example, this lie heads to the higher truth that no one will return alive to Worms (1580,4/1587), a truth made all the more concrete by Hagen's destruction of the boat (1581). The point is that Hagen, regardless of the consequences, inevitably tells the truth while his courtly masters, who are ignorant of the consequences, inevitably lie for the sake of their reputations. Thus while Gunther is spreading his absurd story about the “robbers” (1045,4) who supposedly killed Siegfried, Hagen is standing by Siegfried's body whose wounds bleed profusely in the presence of his murderer.

Hagen's willingness to admit openly his deed, his “unbedingte Offenheit,” as one critic calls it,⁴¹ is often seen as a heroic trait, the hallmark of Teutonic virtue.⁴² But as Josef Körner pointed out more than fifty years ago, Hagen is loyal and truthful to no one.⁴³ When, for example, Hagen flaunts his guilt in Kriemhild's face (1790), he is being sadistically cruel, not honest; and when he confesses openly about killing the fairy man (1604) and later to Gunther (1626) about the death of Gelfrat, he is acting the hypocrite and not the brave hero. After all, he himself had destroyed the boat (1581) so that there was no reason to conceal the facts. Had Hagen really been loyal, he would never have kept silent about the river fairies' prophecy of doom (1542). But he does, claiming that his kings would never believe him: “daz waere mînen herren müelîch ze sagene, / daz wir zen Hiunen solden vliesen alle den lîp” (1543). Though the poet does not say, it is probable that the quite opposite was the case, that Gunther, had he known the truth, would have called off the entire expedition. If this is true, then Hagen's famous answer to Kriemhild's question (nu saget, het Hagene, wer hât nâch iu gesant? [1787,1]) is only empty talk, the utterance of a supremely cynical mind:

“Nâch mir sande niemen,”                    sprach
dô Hagene.
“man ladete her ze lande                    drîe degene:
die heizent mine herren,                    sô bin ich ir man.
deheiner hovereise                    bin ich selten hinder in bestân.”(44)

(1788)

To be sure, the words are true. He has in fact never allowed his masters to journey alone; but as their man, he should have had their best interests at heart. Whatever Hagen's reasons for leaving Worms, they have little to do with loyalty⁴⁵ and nothing to do with respect for “the established order.”⁴⁶

D. G. Mowatt suggests that the Nibelungenlied is the tragedy of courtly Worms whose “smooth façade” splits apart “with the partial absorption of … two strange characters.”⁴⁷ This is not the place to dispute this idea, but I should like to add that without Hagen this “absorption” could very well have taken place. But Hagen, with his antisocial nature and his irrational insistence that Siegfried must die (870), is the one person who stands in the way of any reconcilitation between what Mowatt calls “the harmonious group” (Worms) and the “identified pair” (Siegfried and Brunhild).⁴⁸ Hagen, by his very nature, is “ein absolut Einsamer”⁴⁹ whose inability to compromise places him well beyond the pale of any rational conception of social organization. If this is true, then Hagen is as much of a foreign element in Worms as Brunhild and Siegfried. But he is more than just an outsider: he is the enemy within, a demonic presence, as it were, in the midst of courtly society.

Gottfried Weber, who sees in Hagen “diesen Abgrund der Dämonie,”⁵⁰ has already provided valuable insights into the demonic quality of Hagen's character. It is Carl S. Singer, however, who takes Weber's findings to their logical conclusion when he compares Hagen with Iago, thus offering us in his masterful interpretatation of the sixteenth Aventiure an accurate assessment of Hagen's role in the poem. The poet, he writes, “would … have us see throughout the spectacle of [the hunting contest] that Hagen must be the victor, that there can indeed be no contest between Siegfried, who knows and thinks only life, and Hagen, who is sworn to, and possessed by, the powers that control life.”⁵¹ There can be no doubt that Hagen is somehow attuned with those perverse foces that run counter to everything positive in life, those same forces that turn liebe into leit. It is thus no accident that his role is that of “der Voraussagende” and “der Wissende”⁵² and that he alone is the only one who knows the way to Etzel's court (1524), who knows the journey will mean the destruction of all (1210/1458) and who knows in advance how other people will act.⁵³ Thus Hagen's existence is inexplicable and best understood against the background of man's existential plight. To analyze his acts individually, to separate and classify them, leads to a dead end because there is no rational basis underlying anything he does. Siegfried's murder is a case in point.

The traditional reasons that he had to avenge Brunhild's honor, that he envied and hated Siegfried, that he wanted to increase the political power of Worms, are not fully convincing. There is no reason to assume that Hagen cares about Brunhild's honor, this “tiuvels brût” (450,4), as he himself calls her, whose honor he alludes to only twice (864/1790) and who once even insulted him (447). Nor is there any logical basis for Hagen's hatred for Siegfried. On the contrary, Hagen behaves with considerable constraint when Siegfried first arrives upon the scene and even welcomes his assistance in the Saxon war (151). In a similar vein, there is no hard evidence to support Siegfried Beyschlag's contention that Siegfried, through Kriemhild, was making “einen bedrohlichen Anspruch auf Vorrang”⁵⁴ or for Bostock's comment that Hagen acts as the “responsible statesman” when he “liquidates” Siegfried.⁵⁵ In reality, Siegfried is a harmless fellow⁵⁶ who retires to his own lands after his marriage and would have stayed there forever had it not been for Brunhild's ill conceived invitation. Furthermore, Hagen's claim that Gunther would acquire more territory with Siegfried out of the way is both “vague and irrelevant.”⁵⁷ In fact, Hagen's scheme to avenge Brunhild's honor is, as Körner has already suggested, “nur Deckmotif für eine tiefer gehende Feindschaft.”⁵⁸ But this hostility is not directed toward Siegfried, as Körner believes,⁵⁹ but toward anything, in my view, that runs counter to Hagen's wishes. The point I want to make is that we simply do not know why Hagen kills Siegfried.⁶⁰ The act is irrational and inexplicable. And the reason the plan makes no sense is because Hagen, as Singer points out,⁶¹ “simply does not care” about anything.⁶² Brunhild's honor, the fate of his kings, his friend Volker,⁶³ the hoard which he himself sinks into the Rhine⁶⁴— all this means nothing to him. The only thing that matters to Hagen, it seems, is defiance for its own sake. Gottfried Weber suggests that Hagen makes his rebellious attitude into something absolute, “[die] Verabsolutierung heldisch-kraftgeschwellten Trotzes.”⁶⁵ This is true, but for Weber's heldisch I would substitute pervers; for it is also possible to see Hagen's much vaunted courage as nothing less than a perverted urge to destroy, an expression of violence for its own sake.⁶⁶ Hagen admits as much to Gunther before crossing the Danube while the Burgundians are still under the impression that the visit in Gran will be one of peace.

“Jan' ist mir,” sprach Hagene,                     “mîn
leben niht sô leit,
daz ich mich welle ertrenken                    in disen ünden breit.
ê sol von mînen handen                    ersterben manic
man
in Etzelen landen: des ich vil guoten                    willen hân.”

(1530)

There can be little doubt that the prospect of bloodshed is a pleasing one to Hagen.

Indeed, it would not be farfetched to say that the disaster at Gran is Hagen's own creation. To be sure, there were many causes leading up to it: Siegfried's theft of the ring and the belt, Brunhild's jealousy of Kriemhild, Rüdeger's oath, Kriemhild's madness, to name the most important. But these are only isolated links in a long chain of events. It is Hagen who fuses these links together, thus bestowing upon the poem the unity and logic of its action; namely, the gradual and progressive destruction of an entire people. Schröder's interpretation of Hagen's final words to Kriemhild comes to mind: “du hâst iz nâch dinem willen z'einem ende brâht, / und ist ouch rehte ergangen als ich mir hête gedâht.” (2370). In Schröder's view, Hagen could just as well have said nach minen instead of dinen willen: “Denn [Hagen] selbst hat diesen Ausgang herbeiführen helfen und das Seine dazu beigetragen, daß keiner zurückkehrte, wie die Meerfrauen prophezeit hatten.”⁶⁷ It is Hagen who destroys the boat (1581), who withholds information (1620), who deliberately provokes Kriemhild's wrath (1760ff.) and who conceives (1918) Ortlieb's murder long before it actually happens (1962). From this it would seem that Hagen is intent upon making his own prophecy—“ir habt iu selben widerseit” (1458)—as well as that of the river fairies come true. It is as if he had said: Since you will not listen to me (1458) and since you think I am afraid of Kriemhild's wrath (1463), I shall go with you anyway and prove that you will not come back alive.” And this is exactly what Hagen does. From the moment he takes the Burgundians “singlehanded”⁶⁸ across the Danube, their fate is sealed and the way is paved for the fulfillment of Hagen's prophecy. The events leading up to the death of Rüdeger will bear this out.

The shield scene is usually interpreted as a grand gesture on Hagen's part, his “überlegenster und schönster Freundesdienst,”⁶⁹ which allows Rüdeger to retain both his honor and the salvation of his soul.⁷⁰ The truth of the matter is that Rüdeger is at the end of his tether. He had always followed the courtly code and lead an exemplary life. But now for the first time the system fails him. Regardless of whether he helps Kriemhild or the Burgundians, he will violate that Christian and courtly code of ethics that had always been his infallible guide. Friedrich Maurer sums it up nicely: “sein Wollen und seine Pflicht” are no longer one.⁷¹ As Maurer further points out, there is no divine order and harmony in the Nibelungenlied: “es gibt nur den Tod, der die Entehrung, das Leid beendet oder verhindert.”⁷² What this means, though Maurer does not say so, is that there is only one option left to Rüdeger—suicide. When he offers his shield to Hagen, he has already made this decision and establishes a symbolic bond between himself and the one person in the poem who truly understands the nature of the void. Maurer is correct in pointing out that Rüdeger does not die a Christian death; but in place of his suggestion that his death was “Germanic” and “heroic,”⁷³ I would seize upon his own phrase—“der Abgrund tut sich vor [Rüdeger] auf”—⁷⁴ and say that Rüdeger's death is that of a man at the edge of the abyss. In those final moments, before charging into the fray like a raging animal, Rüdeger has become what Hagen is: an irrational and destructive force. Rüdeger's death is Hagen's personal triumph, the triumph of a spirit that always denies.

And with this we come to the true significance of Hagen: he is a destroyer of values, a creator of voids. Kriemhild's love for Siegfried is a case in point. Their marriage should have been the ultimate realization of êre and minne. But their marriage was also a colossal mismatch, doomed, as Bekker points out,⁷⁵ from the moment of its inception. That its failure would mean the death of thousands, is proof enough that the thread that holds man in check from his baser impulses is a slender one. It is Hagen who breaks this thread when he deprives Kriemhild of Siegfried, the one thing in her life which she had raised to an absolute. That this is so, we need only witness the depth of her grief:

Dô seic si zuo der erden,                    daz si niht
ensprach.
die schoenen vreudelôsen                    ligen man dô
sach.
Kriemhilde jâmer                    wart unmâzen grôz:
do erschrê si nâch unkrefte                    daz al diu
kemenâte erdôz

(1009)

Bereft of Siegfried, Kriemhild is at an absolute dead end, “ez ist an sîme lîbe al min vreude gelegen” (1055,4). Her only other link to Siegfried is the hoard; but Hagen even robs her of this. To borrow Bekker's phrase, the hoard for Kriemhild “is. … a piece of Siegfried,”⁷⁶ an extension of his person, which, if used against Hagen, would be tantamount to a living Siegfried avenging his own murder. The point to be made is that when Hagen robs Kriemhild of both Siegfried and the hoard, he creates in her a void so great that she is driven into a madness as black and hopeless as that of King Lear. And because Kriemhild is not only a powerful queen, but a powerful queen gone mad, it is a void that swallows up an entire civilization.

.....

By focusing on Hagen and on the fullscale destruction at the end of the poem, it becomes clear that the Nibelungenlied, among other things, is a document of man's existential plight. It is Kriemhild who states the central issue of this plight when she proposes to Hagen, “welt ir mir geben widere daz ir mir genomen, / so muget ir noch wol lebende heim zen Burgonden komen” (2367). But Hagen knows what crazed and demented Kriemhild does not: that the irretrievable cannot be retrieved, that nothing lost can be regained. With Gunther's death, which he himself, incidentally, arranges (2368), Hagen is ready for his final triumph: “der [hort] sol dich, vâlandinne, immer wol verholen sîn” (2371,4). Both Siegfried and the hoard, everything that had given meaning to Kriemhild's life, is irrevocably lost;⁷⁷ and whatever sanity she still might possess vanishes under the weight of this horrible truth. She kills Hagen with Siegfried's sword, the final link between herself and him; and when she does, the poem has come full circle. The void that Hagen created has taken its due and everything and everyone involved is lost forever in its depths. Hagen's triumph is to have reduced a once proud and confident queen to a subhuman level of creatural pain and suffering. Like a wounded animal, her cries and shouts of pain are to no avail when Hildebrant finally turns on her. “waz mohte si gehelfen daz si sô groezlîchen schrê?” (2376,4).

Thus to look for anything positive or heroic in Hagen is, in my reading of the poem, to search for something that is not there. Hagen is living proof that a perversity dwells in all things. This is not to say that he is an agent of the devil or a creature of another world. On the contrary, it is a total lack of supernatural qualities that makes him the elusive and fascinating character he is. Hagen is simply Hagen; that is to say, this human being of flesh and blood is as real as the perversity he represents. As J. Stout points out, the compilers of the Nibelungenlied “haben [in ihm] das Böse, das Teuflische, den Antichristen personifiziert.”⁷⁸ Taken to its logical conclusion, Hagen is the living presence of evil in what Bekker calls the “closed self-referential world of the Nibelungenlied” which has “no point of reference outside itself” and “no answer to its self-generated destruction”.⁷⁹

The poet of the Nibelungenlied must have been disillusioned with the optimism and the complacency of his times. To paraphrase Singer, the poem seems to be saying that the man-created values of the courtly world are of no value to man in his “inevitable conflict” with the powers that control and delimit human life. I would add to this that these delimiting powers are God-given absolutes; and against them, the pseudo absolutes of êre and minne, as they are depicted in the courtly figures of the Nibelungenlied, are nothing. And yet with all its blood and carnage, the poem can hardly be called a document of nihilism. Grim as it is, there is a degree of justice in the end: Hagen, this negative spirit, gets his just desserts; and in the person of Dietrich von Bern who, in Weber's view, represents “[eine] höhere Geistigkeit,”⁸⁰ courtly life seems destined to go on. To be sure, there is no “transcendental superstructure by which the characters can orient themselves and resolve their struggles.”⁸¹ But this, I think, was an integral part of the author's method and had nothing to do with his religious convictions. Instead of moralizing, he offered his courtly audience an exaggerated but realistic picture of the terror that lurked beneath the calm surface of courtly life. And, in turn, his courtly listeners were expected to supply the missing “superstructure” and pass judgment in God's name. This, of course, is precisely what happsns in the Klage where Kriemhild is saved and Hagen condemned. As R. Pérennec convincingly argues, the Nibelungenlied is a secular poem which makes use of “un schéma familier et efficace” to demonstrate more vividly than “la littérature d'inspiration chrétienne” an inescapable fact of existence: “la mort est dans la vie, la force est faiblesse, la sécurité danger.”⁸²

What the poem seems to be saying—at least in my reading of it—is that the enemy is within man himself, that in every society there is a Hagen or Hagen-like force that threatens to destroy it. The fact that the poem deals with the courtly world of the thirteenth century does not make it any less universal. To paraphrase Robert Frost, there is “something” that does not “love a wall” and there is also something that does not love man's aspirations to success and happiness. The Nibelungenlied is a “humble and religious”⁸³ demonstration of this “something.” Let us not forget that Kriemhild was once a charming girl who was hated by no one (3,1), who planned to stay beautiful forever (15,3) and who intended to avoid both joy and sorrow (17,3). The poem stands as a warning that despite man's institutions, his cultures and his best intentions, there is yet a higher force that directs his life. As all things must die, so too must joy inevitably turn to sorrow. Why this is so is “something” that no one understands. Indeed, Hagen's final words to Kriemhild (2371), “den schatz den weiz zu niemen wan got unde mîn: / der sol dich, vâlandinne, immer wol verholen sîn” have the same awesome finality as those of Iago when Othello asks him why he did it:

Demand me nothing; what you know, you know:
From this time forth I never will speak word.

(Act V, ii)

Notes

1. D. G. Mowatt, “Studies toward an Interpretation of the ‘Nibelungenlied,’” GLL, 14 (1960/61), 257-270.

2. Hugh Sacker, “On Irony in the Nibelungenlied: Two Preliminary Notes,” Ibid., 271-281.

3. Hugo Bekker, The Nibelungenlied: A Literary Analysis (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1971).

4. Mowatt, pp. 261/262.

5. Siegfried Beyschlag, “Das Motiv der Macht bei Siegfrieds Tod,” GRM, 33 (1951/52), 96-108. Here, p. 105.

6. Mowatt, p. 263 f.

7. Sacker, passim.

8. Bekker, p. 6 et passim.

9. All quotations are from Das Nibelungelied, nach der Ausgabe von Karl Bartsch, ed. Helmut de Boor, 17th ed. (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1963).

10. Bekker, p. x.

11. K. C. King, “The Message of the ‘Nibelungenlied’—A Reply,” MLR, 57 (1962), 541-550. Here, p. 547.

12. P. B. Salmon, “Why does Hagen die?” GLL, 18 (1963), 3-13. Here p. 12.

13. Gottfried Weber, Das Nibelungenlied: Problem und Idee (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1963), p. 43.

14. J. K. Bostock, “The Message of the ‘Nibelungenlied,’” MLR, 55 (1960), 200-212. Here, p. 207.

15. Ursula R. Mahlendorf and Frank J. Tobin, “Hagen: A Reappraisal,” Monatshefte, 63 (1971), 125-140. Here, p. 130.

16. Rolf Endres, Einführung in die mittelhochdeutsche Literatur (Frankfurt am Main: ein Ullstein Buch, No. 2811, 1971), p. 154.

17. The Nibelungenlied, trans. A. T. Hatto (Baltimore: Penguin Books, No. L137, 1964), p. 323.

18. Julius Schwietering, Die deutsche Dichtung des Mittelalters (Darmstadt, 1957), p. 205.

19. See Helmut Brackert, “Nibelungenlied und Nationalgedanke,” Mediaevalia litteraria: Festschrift für Helmut de Boor zum 80. Geburtstag, eds. Ursala Henning and Herbert Kolb (Munich: C. HBeck Verlag), 343-364. Here, p. 356. See also Literatur in der Schule. Band I: Mittelalterliche Texte im Unterricht, eds. Helmut Brackert, Hannelore Christ, Horst Holzschuh (Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1973), p. 72ff.

20. Das Nibelungenlied, ed. Friedrich Zarncke (Leipzig, 1894), stanzas 1282/1681. Quoted after Werner Schröder, “Die Tragödie Kriemhilds im Nibelungenlied,” Nibelungen-Studien (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1968), 48-156. Here, p. 156.

21. Diu Klage, ed. Karl Bartsch (Darmstadt, 1964), v. 3524ff. Quoted after Endres, p. 164.

22. Schröder, “Tragödie,” p. 156; King, p. 543; Endres, p. 147ff.

23. Brackert, p. 349.

24. Sacker, p. 275.

25. For many scholars, the events of the poem can be traced back to Hagen's jealousy of Siegfried. In Weber's view, for example, Hagen envies the “unermeßliche Macht” (p. 44) that Sigfried derives from the hoard (7774); Beyschlag (p. 99) identifies stanza 122f. as the beginning of hostilities between Hagen and Siegfried. See also Werner Hoffman, Das Nibelungenlied (Munich: R Oldenbourg Verlag, 1969), p. 75: “… Sigfrids Ankunft [hat] seine [Hagens] Stellung in Worms insofern verändert, als hier fortan nicht mehr er, sondern Sigfrid der körperlich stärkste Mann ist (s. schon 130,2-4).”

26. Hatto, p. 323.

27. Schröder, “Tragödie,” p. 93.

28. Cf. stanza 294.

29. Bekker, p. 62.

30. See H. B. Willson, “Blood and Wounds in the ‘Nibelungenlied,’” MLR, 55, (1960), 40-50. Here, p. 42.

31. Schröder, “Tragödie,” p. 122.

32. Ibid., p. 112.

33. Carl S. Singer, “The Hunting Contest: An Interpretation of the Sixteenth Aventiure of the Nibelungenlied, GR,” 42 (1967), 163-183. Here, p. 170.

34. Ibid., p. 183.

35. Cf. stanza 598.

36. For example, Weber (p. 49) talks of “… die Todesahnung, die ihn [Hagen] mild macht für seine Freunde—ins Granitene aber verhärtet für seine Gegenspielerin.”

37. See Mahlendorf and Tobin, p. 133.

38. Hatto, p. 162 (note).

39. Bekker, p. 146.

40. This is not to say that Hagen never plays the courtly games when he lies. Cf. stanza 473 where Hagen lies to Brunhild about the whereabouts of Siegfried during the Island contests.

41. Friedrich Panzer, Das Nibelungenlied: Entstehung und Gestalt (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1955), p. 240.

42. See Hermann Schneider, Heldendichtung, Geistlichendichtung, Ritterdichtung (Heidelberg, 1943), p. 381: “Er ist der gute Gefolgsmann, der die Beschimpfung seiner Königin, seines Könighauses rächt; heimtückische Züge fehlen nicht, aber von dem kleinlichen Bösewichte, dem schlechten Kerl, den spätere Bearbeiter aus ihm machen wollten, rückt er ab.”

43. Jose Körner, Das Nibelungenlied (Leipzig, (1921), p. 82.

44. But see Mahlendorf and Tobin (p. 129) for whom stanza 1788 represents the directness and simplicity of Hagen's concept of duty.

45. See Endres, p. 147ff.

46. Mahlendorf and Tobin, p. 128.

47. Mowatt, p. 263.

48. Ibid., p. 264.

49. Weber, p. 56.

50. Ibid., p. 45.

51. Singer, pp. 179/183.

52. Burghart Wachinger, Studien zum Nibelungenlied (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1960), p. 36.

53. Mahlendorf and Tobin (p. 132) talk of “Hagen's uncanny ability to predict people's reactions. …”

54. Beyschlag, p. 100.

55. Bostock, p. 207.

56. Bostock (p. 205) refers to Siegfried as “the simple-minded Sivrit.”

57. See D. G. Mowatt & Hugh Sacker, The Nibelungenlied: An Interpretative Commentary (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1967), p. 86.

58. Körner, p. 77.

59. Cf. Körner's interpretation (p. 77) of stanza 993: “Wer mir [Hagen] überlegen ist, den hasse ich.”

60. But see Bakker (p. 134): “And so we must conclude that Brunhild's and Hagen's reasons for wishing Siegfried dead, though very different, issue from the same discovery: each of them sees Siegfried as a king whose error is his love for Kriemhild and his consequent failure to assert his status as the strongest king.”

61. Singer, p. 179.

62. Bekker (p. 130) develops this same theme further.

63. Körner (p. 80) compares Hagen's friendship for Volker with “Wallen-steins Liebe zu Max Piccolomini.” For an opposite view, see Bekker (p. 143) who sees “no particularly warm personal feelings” for Volker “on Hagen's part.”

64. Bekker (p. 131) suspects that Hagen fully intended to use the hoard (1137). In my view, however, Hagen sank the hoard in the Rhine so that no one would ever use it. It is thus quite probable that Hagen, as Bekker suggests (p. 131), was prepared to break the oath he made to the kings in stanza 1140.

65. Weber, p. 56.

66. Endres (p. 146f.) talks of Hagen's “destruktive Komplexe.”

67. Schröder, “Zum Problem der Hortfrage im Nibelungenlied,” Nibelungenlied-Studien (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1968), p. 178.

68. Sacker, p. 279.

69. Hans Naumann, Höfische Symbolik: Rüdegers Tod,” DVjs, 10 (1932), 387-403. Here, p. 393.

70. Ibid.

71. Friedrich Maurer, Leid (Bern and Munich: Francke Verlag, 1951), p. 34.

72. Ibid., p. 37.

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid., p. 34.

75. See Bekker's chapters “Brunhild: the Kingship Motif” (p. 69ff) and “Brunhild: the Eigenmann Motif” (p. 84ff.).

76. Bekker, p. 68.

77. Cf. Schröder, “Hortfrage,” p. 173: “Nicht das ihr geraubte Gold, sondern den ermordeten Sivrit fordert sie zurück, nicht etwas theoretisch Mögliches, sondern etwas absolut Unmögliches.”

78. J. Stout, Und ouch Hagene (Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1963), p. 325.

79. Bekker, p. 155.

80. Weber, p. 55.

81. Mahlendorf and Tobin, p. 139.

82. R. Pérennec, “Remarques sur la seizième aventure de la Chanson des Nibelungen, Etudes Germaniques, 28 (1973), 153-166. Here, p. 164.

83. Bostock, p. 201.