SOURCE: “Interpretations” in A Preface to the “Nibelungenlied”, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987, pp. 144-66.

[In the following excerpt, Andersson summarizes the new approaches taken in critical analyses of the Nibelungenlied during the last half of the twentieth century.]

Two publications by Nelly Dürrenmatt and Friedrich Panzer in 1945 marked a turning point in the analysis of the Nibelungenlied and ushered in a period of postwar criticism that differed distinctly from the work done during the forty years before the war.¹ These earlier years were dominated by Andreas Heusler, whose pertinent studies appeared from 1902 to 1941.² Heusler's project was to comprehend the Nibelungenlied against the background of the earlier forms of the legend. Much of his work was therefore devoted to a reconstruction of these forms through a painstaking comparison of the surviving versions. After the war scholars came to believe that his approach was too backward-looking, and strenuous efforts were made to find a new method that would integrate the Nibelungenlied more decisively into the literary scene around 1200. This was the underlying rationale in both Dürrenmatt's and Panzer's books.

Panzer proceeded from the observation that German literature in the second half of the twelfth century was revolutionized by French impulses. He set out to show that French literature was no less crucial for the Nibelungenlied than for courtly romance and sought to demonstrate a series of borrowings from the chansons de geste, notably Daurel et Beton, Renaus de Montauban, and the Song of Roland. In addition, he believed that he could isolate occasional Virgilian echoes and derive certain scenes in the Nibelungenlied from contemporary political events. For example, he associated the idyll at Pöchlarn in Adventure 27 with Frederick Barbarossa's visit to the court of King Bela of Hungary in 1189, during which the emperor betrothed his youngest son to Bela's daughter. In other words, Panzer argued both a more elevated literary culture for the poet and a greater freedom in devising new episodes. Occasionally his derivation of the narrative from French sources or current events ran counter to Heusler's location of the same episodes in the native “Brünhildenlied” or the “Ältere Not.” In order to argue that the idyll at Pöchlarn originated in the state visit of 1189 he was obliged, for example, to demonstrate that the poet did not find the episode in the “Ältere Not,” as Heusler assumed. This constraint led to a long chapter in which he argued that the “Ältere Not” in fact never existed. Instead, Panzer reasoned, the relationship between the Nibelungenlied and þiðreks saga should be explained not from a common source but from the Norwegian compiler's extensive reworking of the Nibelungenlied itself.

Panzer's book is a curious example of the wrong solution put forward at the right historical moment. His new source proposals have enjoyed little favor, and the direct derivation of the account in þiðreks saga from the Nibelungenlied has never been credited by the scholars most competent to judge the issue.³ Nevertheless, his book had a liberating effect because it offered release from Heusler's constructions. Scholars who had not performed the source operations themselves were inclined to believe Panzer, at least to the extent that Heusler's system now appeared to be more fragile than they had previously imagined. Even where Panzer's book is not directly mentioned in the critical literature, the reader senses that it lies beneath a new skepticism toward source study and a new eagerness to evaluate the Nibelungenlied on its own terms, as an autonomous creation comparable to the works of Hartmann, Wolfram, and Gottfried.

Whereas Panzer's book followed tradition by dealing almost exclusively with source questions, Nelly Dürrenmatt broke more clearly with the past. She made a considerably juster estimate of Heusler's achievements than Panzer but argued that he had isolated the Nibelungenlied too programmatically from courtly epic.⁴ She therefore set herself the task of identifying the courtly elements. This labor is carried out in the form of a somewhat mechanical comparison of ritual scenes: reception and leave-taking formalities, forms of hospitality, gift-giving, festive arrangements, mourning practices, knighting and marriage ceremonies. Her conclusion is that the Nibelungenlied poet is in fact more interested and prodigal in these ritual matters than the writers of precourtly or courtly epic. He therefore emerges as an almost hypercourtly figure rather than a nostalgic re-creator of heroic antiquity.

Like Panzer's book, Dürrenmatt's had an impact not quite commensurate with its real accomplishment. The ceremonial elements she singles out are not a characteristic feature of German courtly epic, so that the comparison does not so much establish an analogy as point up a difference. Moreover, in the second section of the book, on some of the more important characters in the poem, she distinguishes carefully between those features already present in the sources as posited by Heusler and new features not anticipated by the sources. She does not therefore disallow Heusler's findings but merely tries to focus the extant redaction more clearly. In the heat of a new critical day, however, her book lent itself to a more far-reaching interpretation. It was read as a reorientation of the Nibelungenlied away from earlier literature and into closer apposition with the latest fashions. Though still grounded in Heusler's work, it offered an alternative context that encouraged the abandonment of Heusler's system.

One of the criticisms leveled at Heusler, especially by Panzer, was the origin of his science in Germanic or even Scandinavian studies. Not only Heusler but also the other important Nibelung scholars of the 1920's and 1930's (Neckel, Schneider, de Boor, Hempel) belonged to this tradition. Dürrenmatt's shift of focus to classical Middle High German literature allowed scholars in this latter field to turn their attention to the Nibelungenlied less hesitantly than before. Wolfram and Gottfried scholars figured prominently in the new generation (Mergell, W. J. Schröder, W. Schröder, Weber, Wapnewski, Bumke). The Nibelungenlied had now been recruited for their literature, and they were free to approach it unencumbered by the legendary apparatus that Panzer had declared irrelevant.

This trend was of course promoted in no small measure by the New Critical methods that prevailed in German literary studies just after World War II. Close reading was the order of the day, and Panzer's abolition of legendary history extended this critical license to the Nibelungenlied. The first result was a series of intense interpretations of the poem without regard to possible sources.

TEXTUAL INTERPRETATIONS (1950-65)

Three studies by Bodo Mergell, Walter Johannes Schröder, and Werner Schröder, the last two of monograph size, may serve as samples of the new approach. They appeared in 1950, 1955, and 1960 and have in common a concern with the structure of the poem and the capacity of that structure to communicate the poet's intention. They assume that the structure is coherent and meaningful, thus departing from an earlier view that the poet recast an inherited story, making piecemeal modifications without strict regard for the overall plan of the poem and without necessarily imputing a consistent meaning to the whole.

Mergell attaches his study explicitly to Dürrenmatt's precedent, but is more interested in the governing idea of the poem than in the outer trappings.⁵ He discovers a set of counterbalancing tensions. Siegfried stands in significant opposition to the court at Worms, in which he represents a new dynamic vitality in the context of an older petrified culture. The relationship is dialectical because Gunther needs the primitive strength of a Siegfried for his bridal quest, and Siegfried needs the courtly polish of a Gunther for his wooing. Mergell sees Siegfried's entry into the life at Worms as analogous to Parzival's entry into the world in search of renewal. Kriemhild and Hagen form a similar polarity; she is gradually reduced from loving wife and grieving widow to avenging demon, while Hagen experiences a countervalent rise from traitor to triumphant guardian. This contrast dominates the poem as a whole and describes a religious arc culminating in a final confrontation with God. Hagen, however, stands alone with God in his victorious preservation of the hidden gold,⁶ whereas Kriemhild is condemned as a “vâlandinne” (she-devil). Mergell compares this structural chiasmus to the rise of the Grail hero and the counterbalancing fall of the neutral angels in Parzival.

A second preoccupation of Mergell's article is the formal patterning of the poem as a whole. He divides it into eight pentads, each comprising five adventures, with the centerpiece (Adventure 20) doing service in both the fourth and fifth pentad. More interestingly, he notes that the Nibelungenlied shares its two-part structure with courtly romance. As in courtly romance, the bipartition is not arbitrary or meaningless but a contrastive design revealing different degrees of religious awareness.

W. J. Schröder's analysis is also structural in nature, but it attempts a more encompassing interpretation.⁷ He takes note of Heusler's caution against the imposition of a didactic principle on heroic stories, but advocates a search not so much for a didactic principle as for a coherent plot.⁸ He begins with an analysis of the characters, urging that they are not to be confused with real people, whose actions are motivated by individual responses to a given situation. Heroic poetry does not motivate action psychologically but through the manipulation of motifs. The characters are comparable to chess pieces, each limited to a particular type of move. Thus a queen will make only moves that are inherent in her nature as a queen. The drastic changes in such characters as Kriemhild and Siegfried (maiden becomes maenad, aggressor becomes ally) would appear to contradict this principle, but the changes are only apparent. Kriemhild merely becomes what she already is; she realizes her latent queenliness. Siegfried, on the other hand, merely takes on the deceptive appearance of a different being. Corresponding to these split-level characters is a splitlevel stage: a courtly contemporary scene (Worms) and a mythic past (Nibelungenland, Islant, Hunland).

Within this divided realm each man seeks out the matching woman. Siegfried (strength) woos Kriemhild (beauty), while Gunther (king) woos Brünhild (queen). They achieve their goals not by virtue of what they are but by assuming opposite characteristics. Siegfried becomes a courtier, and Gunther borrows Siegfried's strength. Reality is traded for appearance. Thus the ground is laid for deceived expectations. Kriemhild, who desires the strongest man, must be reassured that it was actually Siegfried, not Gunther, who subdued Brünhild, but Brünhild, who desires to be a queen, must be reassured that Siegfried is in truth a vassal. Their insistence precipitates the revelations of the queens' quarrel and makes Siegfried's presence in Worms a threat to the status quo.

The underlying problem in the poem is the survival of the court at Worms. It stands in jeopardy because Kriemhild and her brothers represent two different spheres; she is a creature of nature, but the outlook of her brothers is determined by their social milieu. It is the function of the plot to bring this latent conflict to the surface. Siegfried is the catalyst. He lays claim to Worms by virtue of his inherent strength. Gunther, on the other hand, maintains his claim by virtue of his legitimacy. The strain is further exacerbated by the subsequent marriages, which aim at joining compatible partners. These partners achieve their ends, however, only by resorting to a mode of existence contradictory to their inherent mode. Siegfried, the quintessence of natural strength, must subordinate himself to the artificial demands of society and become dependent on it. Gunther, the quintessential king, must put himself under Siegfried's tutelage. Thus, when the contract is fulfilled, both discover that in the process they have betrayed themselves and compromised their very existence.

The upshot of the inherent differences between Kriemhild's nature and that of her brothers is a deadly conflict. First the men, Gunther and Siegfried, act to set the conflict aside, but then the women, Kriemhild and Brünhild, act to ensure that it will assert itself with full force. Gunther triumphs at the end of Part I and Kriemhild at the end of Part II, but both triumph only in appearance, because both are powerless without the outsider Siegfried. Society, in the person of Gunther, enlists nature (Siegfried's strength) in Part I, while nature (Kriemhild) enlists the festive forms of society in Part II. Nature succumbs in Part I, society in Part II. In this drama the strong characters (Siegfried and Brünhild) play the secondary roles, while the weak characters (Gunther and Kriemhild) play the lead roles. The implication is that catastrophe ensues from weakness.

Not content with these largely structural and functional collocations, Schröder goes on to speculate on the historical theme of the Nibelungenlied, that is, the extent to which it transposes the past into the present. Reversing Heusler's dictum that heroic poetry is personalized history, Schröder proposes to penetrate the historical layer by depersonalizing and thereby repoliticizing the action of the Nibelungenlied. Gunther's personal weakness is tantamount to political incompetence; the courtly culture of Worms is no more than an empty form. Siegfried's strength is therefore a prerequisite for political security. In this way the poet plays off “old” strength against “new” culture, nature against society. In the process Siegfried and Brünhild are modernized at Worms, while Kriemhild and Gunther are transported back into mythic time in Nibelungenland and Islant. Schröder suggests that this pattern reflects the discrepancy between real power and nominal rule that led to the downfall of the Merovingian dynasty. Seen in this way, the primitive narrative material of the Nibelungenlied, generally taken to betray the poet's inability to adjust the old story to his new purposes, becomes meaningful. The poet's intention was to redramatize the basic thought of the old story, the incongruence of political power and political rule.

Like Mergell, Schröder comes to the study of the Nibelungenlied from Wolfram's Parzival. Unlike Mergell, he is intent on drawing a distinction. After reviewing the broad similarities and dissimilarities between the Nibelungenlied and Parzival, he concludes that they pose the same question but provide different answers. They ask how the weak individual can assume power. The Nibelungenlied judges that he cannot. Wolfram judges that he can if he undergoes a transformation. Parzival obeys an ethical imperative to seek the truth. The figures in the Nibelungenlied follow no such imperative and are trapped in a static existence. The two-part narrative structures contrast correspondingly; in the first part of each the king establishes himself, but in the second part Gunther loses his life whereas Parzival is guided volens nolens by God. In other words, Parzival is predicated on the model of salvation, but death in the Nibelungenlied is unredeemed. Where Wolfram constructs teleologically, the Nibelungenlied merely observes the human state.

In a final section Schröder urges the importance of the Klage as the first interpretation of the Nibelungenlied and a key to the contemporary understanding of the work. It exculpates Kriemhild but condemns Hagen and Gunther, attributing the catastrophe to their arrogance (vv. 3,434-38). By implication their guilt lies in an excessive self-reliance without regard for a higher truth. This critique bears out Schröder's comparison between the Nibelungenlied and Parzival.

Although Werner Schröder places his study under the auspices of the title “Das Buoch Chreimhilden” found in MS Munich 341 (D), just as Heusler had done forty years earlier, he begins with the rejection of Heusler's method that had by now become a new exordial topic.⁹ He held that Heusler's approach was not so different from Lachmann's; Heusler merely made his slices vertically rather than horizontally, assigning much of the flavor to the bottom layers of the cake. According to Schröder any concession of literary qualities to the earlier forms of the story necessarily detracted from the final confection. Another part of the exordial topic, this one borrowed from Panzer, is the overestimation of a book by the French scholar Ernest Tonnelat, which German scholars espoused after the war because it adhered faithfully to the text of the Nibelungenlied without undertaking excursions into textual prehistory.¹⁰

W. Schröder too was intent on a precise understanding of the text as it stands, but on the basis of a much more cautious reading than the one put forward by W. J. Schröder, with whom he takes strong issue, particularly on the symbolic interpretation of characters. As a consequence, much of the study is devoted to lexical tallies and the gauging of shades of meaning, particularly in the word leit (sorrow, injury, etc.), which Friedrich Maurer had placed at the center of his interpretation.¹¹ Whereas W. J. Schröder probably made the Nibelungenlied more interesting than it really is, W. Schröder's recapitulations make it decidedly less interesting than it is.

Schröder's aim is not only to vindicate Kriemhild's place at the center of the poet's design but also to rehabilitate her, to rescue her on the one hand from symbolic reductionism (p. 93) and on the other hand from the suspicion of mixed motives. Maurer had interpreted her desire for the Nibelung treasure as a real desire for reparation of the wrong committed against her and a symbolic restoration of her honor.¹² Schröder argues repeatedly that the treasure is not a real issue.¹³ The poet would not have lavished so much attention on the love relationship if that were not the sole motive for her revenge. Kriemhild thus grieves only for her husband, not for the power or prestige that he conferred. When she demands the treasure from Hagen, her wish is only to triumph over her husband's killer. Her interest in the treasure only masks her longing for Siegfried. Like W. J. Schröder, W. Schröder concludes with an appeal to the Klage (and redaction C), which authenticate his reading by emphasizing Kriemhild's fidelity and guiltlessness.

The rethinking of the Nibelungenlied apparent in these German studies was echoed in a group of articles by three British scholars in 1960 and 1961. J. K. Bostock's contribution was temperamentally in line with Werner Schröder's close reading.¹⁴ It interprets the poem in terms of church teaching and attributes the final catastrophe to moral flaws, notably übermuot, or arrogance, a sin of which virtually everyone in the poem is convicted.¹⁵ The strength of the article is that it locates a unified moral principle supported by the frequent occurrence of a particular word. The weakness is that it reads rather like a critical penitential, in which the sins of the various characters are tallied up and penance duly prescribed.

D. G. Mowatt's article is more in keeping with W. J. Schröder's symbolical reading, but it is theoretically uncompromising.¹⁶ Mowatt categorically declares the principles of New Criticism applicable to medieval literature in general and the Nibelungenlied in particular, decrying only the tendency of German scholars to make occasional concessions to historical thinking. He finds it unnecessary to invoke different narrative layers in explaining apparent contradictions. With W. J. Schröder he locates a meaningful design in the fateful bringing together of dissimilar natures (Brünhild/Gunther, Kriemhild/Siegfried), and uses the Goethean analogy of elective affinities. The incompatibility of social and individualistic instincts is the theme of the Nibelungenlied, just as it is of other courtly epics.

Hugh Sacker credits the poet not only with thematic structures but with ironic and symbolic effects as well.¹⁷ He resists the idea that epithets are merely stereotypical and urges cases in which adjectives such as übermüete (bold) or minneclîch (lovely) signal quite the opposite. Indeed, he finds the first twelve stanzas of the poem thoroughly shot through with irony. In the area of symbolism he offers not only the sexually significant ring and belt taken from Brünhild and a plausible analogy between the wild falcon of Kriemhild's dream and the wild suitor who materializes at Worms, but also some rather unexpected sexual symbolism in Siegfried's death scene. Such imputations represent a real leap in our estimate of the poet, since they imply his ability both to create intricate meanings and to undermine them at the same time. If true, Sacker's observations would not so much clarify as complicate our understanding of the poem.¹⁸

The postwar attempts to come to terms with the Nibelungenlied in more text-oriented studies culminated in a series of books published between 1955 and 1965. The first was Friedrich Panzer's volume of almost five hundred pages.¹⁹ Those sections devoted to the form of the Nibelungenlied remain an indispensable compendium of tabulations relating to such matters as metrics, style, vocabulary, formulas, rhetorical devices, numerical predilections, ceremonial effects, descriptive modes, sententious expressions, inner chronology, contradictions, and so forth. The long chapter of 165 pages on sources is flawed, however, by Panzer's misconstruction of the textual relationships. It is symptomatic that he cites approvingly the work on French heroic epic by Joseph Bédier, whose inventionism was swept away just four years later by Ramón Menéndez Pidal.²⁰ Panzer conceded Heusler's “Brünhildenlied” but abolished the “Ältere Not,” emphasizing instead the role of French borrowings and contemporary history. All these pages must now be read with a grain of salt. Panzer does not offer an interpretation as such, only a brief chapter of general assessment (pp. 454-69), which serves as a summation of the poetic qualities of the Nibelungenlied and its position between heroic poetry and chivalric literature. A concluding comparison with Homer notes the great distance between the parochialism of the German poem and Homer's Hellenic panorama, but suggests that the Nibelungenlied offers some compensation in making the inner life of its characters transparent.

Whereas Panzer's book attempts to consolidate the revolution against traditional source studies, Burghart Wachinger's sober monograph both participates in and tempers the revolution.²¹ His book consists of discrete sections on anticipations, structure, and motivation. The first two in particular reflect the preoccupations of the postwar descriptivists, but Wachinger refrains from the temptation to impose ideal proportions in his calculation of the structural divisions. He sees the macrostructure in terms of the major temporal intervals at the end of Adventure 11 (eleven years), the beginning and end of Adventure 19 (three and a half and nine years), and the beginning of Adventure 23 (twelve years), thus singling out an objective criterion for his divisions. The most interesting section of the book is the last, which is an exercise in ascertaining whether the motivations of the action may be grasped without reference to underlying versions that the Nibelungenlied poet failed to integrate convincingly into his final elaboration. In the course of this examination three cruxes are subjected to careful analysis: the motivation of Siegfried's death, the reconciliation of Kriemhild with her brothers at the end of Adventure 19, and her demand for the treasure at the end of the poem. Siegfried's tragedy is interpreted as a result of his subordination to the service of love and hence to Gunther, a sham service with dire consequences. Wachinger thus proposes ill-fated love as the cause of Siegfried's death, but confesses that the motivation is overgrown by other issues to the point of mystification.

The peculiarity that in Adventure 19 the seizure of Kriemhild's treasure comes directly on the heels of her reconciliation is explained by the rigors of the story, which required that the reconciliation take place in order to make Kriemhild's new marriage and the subsequent invitation possible, while at the same time allowing scope for the unresolved hostilities. Kriemhild's loss of her treasure effectively, though not ostensibly, cancels the reconciliation, thus allowing the antagonism to persist unabated below the surface of the action. The difficulties involved in a clear reading of the passage are illustrated by a particularly massive intervention of the C redactor at this point in the story. Finally, Wachinger turns to Kriemhild's last-minute demand for the restoration of her treasure, the motif that so preoccupied Werner Schröder in the same year. Wachinger suggests that she commits herself not to kill Hagen when Dietrich delivers him bound and helpless into her hands. She at first honors the commitment by demanding only satisfaction, but Hagen seizes the opportunity by contriving Gunther's death. Kriemhild now goes back on her commitment, kills Hagen, and thereby justifies her own death.

Unlike other more impetuous apologists, Wachinger formulates his explanations with great caution. In a concluding statement (pp. 139-45) he warns against the dangers of positive overinterpretation along either psychological or symbolical lines (in the manner of W. J. Schröder). At the same time, a reduction of the Nibelungenlied to mere dramatic vitality seems to him less than adequate. He suggests that the interest of the poem may finally lie in the unresolved tension between the parts and the whole, between psychological portrayal and the unintegrated narrative facts. His book is admirable in its reserve, but it offers the student relatively little encouragement. It confirms that the Nibelungenlied is indeed very difficult to explain and hints that its charm may lie in its very uninterpretability.

Other critics were not ready for Wachinger's resignation. In 1963 Gottfried Weber published a general interpretation as ambitious in scope as W. J. Schröder's.²² It pursues the reaction against Heusler (and the compensatory elevation of Tonnelat) in decisive terms, arguing that “attention to the sources perforce obscures the clear recognition of the literary work” (p. 2). Accordingly, about half the book is devoted to a step-by-step retracing of the roles played by the major characters. In the process the heroic figures emerge in the same questionable light that Bostock's brief essay had thrown on them. Siegfried is judged to have succumbed to hubris and a misguided subservience to love. He is flawed by the split between outward courtliness and inner arrogance. Hagen betrays his own better vision when, in vain concern for his honor, he agrees to the journey to Hunland though he knows it is fatal. The Burgundian and Hunnish kings are feeble enough to suggest that the poet had had some unedifying experience of kingship (p. 83). Rüdeger too is a victim of his own chivalric ambition and lack of internalized Christianity.

In all these figures Weber detects a deep-seated pride, which breeds hate, which in turn breeds vengeance and deception. They have in common an inability to transcend their egocentric interests. As a result the formal requirements of chivalry are transformed into a demonic preoccupation with honor, unmitigated by religious faith. The unfulfilled knights of the Nibelungenlied are driven to take refuge in heroic action. In terms of intellectual history, the poet was suspended between heroic nostalgia and the false optimism of chivalric culture. He portrayed a disillusionment with the latter and a reversion to the former. He thus associated himself with the more conservative and less intellectual impulses of Austro-Bavarian writers in opposition to the cultivation of chivalric and courtly values in the West.²³

Bert Nagel's contributions to the study of the Nibelungenlied span more than twenty-five years from 1953 to 1979. One of the earliest and perhaps the best dates from 1954 and is remarkable for its delicate application of textual analysis and keen aesthetic observations.²⁴ Whereas other critics urged a reformulation of doctrine, Nagel was more eager to promote a greater appreciation of the poetic qualities, not least of all the particular effects of the Nibelungenlied stanza. His comments are there fore difficult to summarize. Fundamentally he is concerned with the poet's difficult position between old and new literary conventions, and the skill with which he navigates the shoals. He suggests how the poet mediates between the “old lore” of the Nibelung legend and the new biographical incorporation of Kriemhild, how Kriemhild and Hagen function both as exemplary victims of dark drama and individual personalities, how the dissonant intimations of doom merge with scenes of courtly splendor from the outset to unify the poem as a whole, how the obvious difficulty of maintaining a clear epic flow is offset by dramatic scenes, how the archaic bridal-quest pattern is modernized in terms of courtly love, and how the poet capitalizes on the discrepancy between traditional energy and new refinement to create a feeling of “realism” and vitality in a figure such as Siegfried.

Nagel does not dispute the importance of earlier versions and the residue of discrepancies, but he believes that the poet's Janus position could be an opportunity as well as a dilemma. This does not mean that characters speak and act according to a perfectly consistent idea of their personalities. They can speak “out of character,” as the poet's mouthpiece, for example when Hagen urges church attendance on his companions (stanzas 1,855-56). Nor does it mean that the poem is faultlessly composed, but Nagel asks us to bear in mind that it was intended to be read aloud in installments and that under these circumstances the power of individual scenes would have overshadowed defects in the narrative as a whole.

The undeniable contradictions in the text lend themselves to an analysis in terms of active renovations as well as passive reception. Kriemhild is in some sense two persons, but in the poet's new design she also grows organically from courtly maiden to demonic avenger. In the invitation sequence Nagel accepts the confusing indices of her real longing to see her brothers and her mania for revenge as psychologically comprehensible (stanzas 1,391-1,405). Even the notorious chronological difficulties that enable Kriemhild to give birth to Ortliep in her fifties can be justified to the extent that they convey the timelessness of the vengeance imperative. Similarly, Siegfried's knowledge of Brünhild and his familiarity with Isenstein may be understood symbolically as evidence of an inner affinity. Hence Siegfried's tragedy grows out of his failure to realize his natural destiny with Brünhild and his formation of an unnatural bond with Kriemhild. Brünhild, correspondingly deprived of her destiny, sheds tears in stanza 618, alleging the injustice done Kriemhild in marrying her to a vassal, but this allegation is a pretext designed at once to mask and reveal her own bitter disappointment.

The early phase in Nagel's work culminated in his book of 1965.²⁵ Where the early monograph succeeds in its suggestive impressionism, the book fails because it attempts, but does not attain, comprehensiveness. It is the true heir of the period between 1950 and 1965 in its emphasis on formal criteria. The first section, on history, is half the length of the following sections on Form and Ethos, and “history” turns out to mean only contemporary history, not the literary history of the poem. Like Panzer's book, Nagel's tends to become a repertory of rhetorical features, for example structural schemes, parallelisms, and motival repetitions.²⁶ No summation or theory emerges from these pages, which offer something more like a running commentary. Nagel's book marked the end of a period. Formal analysis was for the moment exhausted in Germany and gave way to other trends. Only in England and the United States did it survive as a brief aftermath.²⁷

BETWEEN THE TRENDS (1960-75)

Even before 1960 there was an uneasy stirring that may be understood as a reaction against the freewheeling surface interpretations of the postwar years. Klaus von See published two traditional source studies in 1957 and 1958, proposing a legal-historical background for Siegfried's role as delegate wooer.²⁸ Joachim Bumke published three source studies in 1958 and 1960, one constructing a source for Adventure 8, one exploring the relationship between the Nibelungenlied and Daurel et Beton, and one outlining dual sources for Part I of the Nibelungenlied.²⁹ As we saw in the previous chapter, Wapnewski's article of 1960 set Rüdeger's dilemma in a legal-historical context and took conscientious account of the source problems.³⁰ In 1959 Gerhart Lohse returned to the relationship between the Nibelungenlied and þiðreks saga, and in 1961 Roswitha Wisniewski published an elaborate study of the sources of Part II, vindicating Heusler's “Ältere Not” despite the persistent doubts of the previous decade.³¹ That the field was not yet ready for such a reaction is indicated by the unbroken silence surrounding Lohse's study and the belated acceptance of Wisniewski's conclusions by Werner Hoffmann in 1982.³² An analogous English reaction against descriptivism was expressed by K. C. King in 1962; he too reclaimed a role for source study.³³

The intermediate period between text interpretation and historical interpretation also saw the appearance of two books by Friedrich Neumann (1967) and Walter Falk (1974). One looks backward in time, the other forward. Neumann's volume is not a unified study but a reprinting and refurbishing of earlier articles.³⁴ The collection is of interest because it shows a scholar of the older school coming to grips with the formalist revolution. His first article originally appeared in 1924.³⁵ It analyzes various characters with attention to the discrepancy between traditional roles in earlier versions of the legend and the more refined manners of the Nibelungenlied: Siegfried's old role as uncouth interloper at Worms and his new role as courtly prince, Brünhild's old role as powerful princess and her new role as comic amazon, Kriemhild's old role as merciless avenger and her new role as courtly lady. According to Neumann such characters were not conceived as living individuals but as exemplary figures embodying particular functions. When ideals and social functions changed, the characters remained suspended between two times. The poet failed to modernize in consistent detail. Neumann agrees with Heusler that the refrain on “love and sorrow” is not adequate to thematize the epic, and he is content to see the poet's achievement in his presentation of dramatic events and colorful scenes.³⁶ By prefacing his book with this essay, Neumann clearly declares his skepticism toward attempts to interpret the poem from a purely contemporary stance and without reference to the residue of older layers.

His chief essay nonetheless makes a real effort to absorb the descriptivist approach by rehearsing the action in painstaking detail, not once but twice.³⁷ These summaries are followed by a critique of Mergell, Maurer, Beyschlag, W. Schröder, and Weber. Mergell receives particularly harsh criticism for remaining on the surface of the text, ignoring problems, and arriving at an interpretation on the basis of a few passages randomly selected and arbitrarily connected. Neumann's criticism achieves its effect through an appeal to sound common sense, but it is not sophisticated and fails to do much damage to the descriptivist hypothesis. The interpretation of all epic depends, after all, on the selection and combination of significant moments. Neumann does not show why the Nibelungenlied should constitute a special exception to this procedure and why disharmonies caused by the retention of old motifs in a new context should be disabling for the interpreter who seeks to establish an ideological framework.

To assign as recent a book as Walter Falk's to the intermediate period is stretching a point, but the author explains in his preface that the central Chapters 5-9 go back to 1961-63, that is, to what we might call the high interpretive period.³⁸ Falk espouses two fundamental doctrines of this period, the “crime and punishment hypothesis” most clearly formulated by Bostock, and the “two-world hypothesis,” which we have encountered in the work of Mergell, W. J. Schröder, Weber, and, in subdued form, Wachinger.³⁹ The “crime and punishment hypothesis” observes that the poem culminates in disaster and posits moral guilt to explain it; the attractiveness of such an interpretation to the postwar generation is obvious. The “two-world hypothesis” holds that two incongruent spheres are brought together with disastrous consequences (e.g., Siegfried or Brünhild in the courtly world of Worms), or that natural affinities (most commonly the bond between Siegfried and Brünhild) are ignored to the detriment of all.

Falk's book has perhaps most in common with Weber's because it advances a religious interpretation. The point of departure is Walther von der Vogelweide's “Ich saz ûf eime steine” and the idea that “guot und weltlîch êre” (wealth and worldly honor) cannot be reconciled with “gotes hulde” (God's grace). Falk explains Walther's view as the result of an inner crisis precipitated by a disillusionment with Minnedienst (love service), and suggests that the characters in the Nibelungenlied also strive for guot and êre without being able to reconcile them with gotes hulde. Siegfried belongs by nature to an “inner world,” but he enters the artificial world of Worms and therefore finds himself straddling two opposed existences. Because he belongs to the same world as Brünhild, he is able to win her for the “world of honor” in Worms. In so doing, he tricks Gunther by drawing him out of the “world of honor,” thus realizing his boast to conquer Worms.

At the same time, however, Siegfried succumbs to the “world of honor” for the sake of love. By winning Kriemhild with Minnedienst he transforms himself from a servant of love into its master; Minnedienst is revealed in its true light as an instrument for achieving power. As a result of his Minnedienst Siegfried makes the transition from challenger and conqueror to a new existence as representative and defender of the “world of honor,” but Kriemhild, out of arrogance, wishes to free him from this restrictive existence. Hence the quarrel of the queens. But ultimately she too is trapped; in appealing to Hagen to protect Siegfried, she submits to the prime representative of the “world of honor.” We are led to understand that an allegiance to courtly love has also undermined her natural principles. Love is thus the root cause of Siegfried's death, but he is love's accomplice; having fulfilled his boast to subdue the Burgundians, he has become a threat to them and thus motivates his own death. As in Walther's “Ich saz ûf eime steine,” untriuwe and gewalt (faithlessness and violence) lurk in the Nibelungenlied, which is an epic counterpart to Walther's lyric.

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS (1965-80)

Falk's structural principles look back to the analytical methods of the 1960's, but his attempt to locate the Nibelungenlied in the political crisis that inspired Walther belongs to the following period of historical interpretations. The latter preoccupation is perhaps already implicit in Panzer's emphasis on contemporary events underlying certain episodes in the Nibelungenlied, but the first explicitly political interpretation was put forward in an essay of 1952 by Siegfried Beyschlag.⁴⁰

Beyschlag begins by pointing out a passage in þiðreks saga (2:262.17-26) suggesting that Sigurd's presence challenges Gunnar's status as king and that Grimhild poses a similar threat to Brynhild. The same threat is hinted at in the Nibelungenlied when Kriemhild blandly states that the whole realm should be subject to Seigfried (stanza 815) and then demands precedence before the court. Beyschlag assembles indications of a court party in opposition to Siegfried and in favor of his elimination, concluding that political issues are a significant factor in the motivation of his death. According to Beyschlag, it could scarcely be coincidental that such a theme surfaced in a literary work during the interregnum years after 1197, and he anticipates Falk with a reference to Walther's political poetry.

Wapnewski's essay of 1960 also made use of political facts to illumine Rüdeger's options in Adventure 37, but the period of systematic historical interpretations was ushered in with a brief article by Josef Szövérffy in 1965.⁴¹ Szövérffy points out that the disaster of Part I is conditioned by Siegfried's quasi-feudal subordination to Gunther in the hope of winning Kriemhild, and that the disaster of Part II is predicated on Rüdeger's similarly quasi-feudal oath to support Kriemhild in Hunland. Feudal allegiances of a questionable nature are therefore the motor of tragedy, and Szövérffy suggests that such skepticism must have been a feature of the years following the quarrel between pope and emperor over the investiture of bishops; the excommunication of emperors and the release of vassals from feudal bonds during these years had destabilized the system of obligations. Szövérffy's proposal is too general to have much explanatory force, but it was the first to establish itself as a clear alternative to legendary analysis in Heusler's tradition or to the more recent textual interpretations.

As we saw in Chapter 5, Karl Heinz Ihlenburg also adduced the problematical character of feudal structures in a full-scale study from 1969.⁴² He projected the Nibelungenlied against the background of the troubled political scene after the death of Henry VI in 1197, but more broadly against the efforts of the aristocracy to assert itself against imperial authority in the twelfth century. The pattern of weak kings (Gunther and Etzel) and powerful vassals (Hagen and Rüdeger) suggested to him the inherent frailty of political institutions.

In an important article from 1974, Jan-Dirk Müller focuses the social forces in a somewhat different light, as a contest not between royalty and aristocracy but between competing elements within the aristocracy.⁴³ Departing from earlier efforts to thematize the action of the Nibelungenlied allegorically, Müller undertakes only to identify certain tensions in the text that mirror contemporary social conditions.

Müller begins with Siegfried's brash claim at Worms, which cannot succeed because it is a challenge to legitimate authority. In the context of political realities such a demonstration of knightly prowess is illusory. Gunther, contrary to Ihlenburg's view, is not to be seen as a weak king but as the bearer of royal authority, charged with the maintenance of peace and able to contain Siegfried's challenge. Siegfried becomes socialized when he relinquishes the idea of individual combat and enters the world of service, love service for Kriemhild's hand and political service on Gunther's behalf. But the idea of service is ambiguous because it is associated both with the voluntary service undertaken by the free hereditary nobility and the obligatory service performed by the unfree eigenman or ministerialis. In Islant, where, in distinction to Worms, strength and status are the same thing, Siegfried must impersonate an eigenman and feign social inferiority not to be mistaken for the suitor himself. Brünhild is therefore confronted with confusing indices, and her confusion determines the sequel.

This confusion is the substance of the queens' quarrel, which is designed to clarify whether Siegfried is Gunther's “genôz” (equal—stanza 819) or his “man” (stanza 821). The word man can mean free vassal, but it can also mean unfree ministerialis, and this is the sense in which Brünhild understands it. The semantic ambiguity reflects a historical development in which unfree ministeriales were rising into positions previously reserved for free nobles, and in which these nobles were themselves losing traditional prerogatives. Class friction ensued, and the question whether a particular man in royal service was a man (free vassal) or eigenholt (ministerialis) was socially crucial. The calamity of Part I thus grows out of Brünhild's misconstruction of Siegfried's voluntary service as obligatory service. Müller points out that the class tension between old and new nobility seems to have been prevalent in southeastern Germany, where the hereditary nobility lost ground in the last third of the twelfth century but in some cases vigorously resisted the trend. This situation may have been particularly pronounced around Passau, where the Nibelungenlied is most likely to have been written.

Two rather more impressionistic historical studies appeared in a volume of essays on medieval Austrian literature published in 1977. Helmut Birkhan concentrates on the broader literary and political context and suggests that the Nibelungenlied may have represented a compromise between the historically oriented Welf literature of the East and the courtly Hohenstaufen literature of the West.⁴⁴ Passau, with its Hohenstaufen sympathies but Welf location in Bavaria, would have been conducive to this double vision, and the period after Henry the Lion's fall in 1180 and the submission of his Danish ally Valdemar in 1181 would have been the right moment for the poet's barbs against the Bavarian and Saxon targets of Hohenstaufen animosity. Birkhan doubts that Rüdeger was conceived as a fictional reflection of a Babenberg duke, such as Leopold VI, because a duke would scarcely have been flattered to see himself counterfeited as a count. Birkhan suggests instead that Rüdeger may have been intended as an idealized antitype to Barbarossa's faithless vassal Henry the Lion.

In the same volume Sylvia Konecny draws attention to King Sigemund's abdication in Siegfried's favor (stanza 713) and explains it on the basis of a Frankish practice that precluded an uncrowned prince from having a binding marriage or legitimate heirs.⁴⁵ Sigemund's abdication may therefore be understood as an effort to maximize Siegfried's value as a marriage partner for Kriemhild. Of particular interest in this line of argument is Konecny's further assumption of a hypothetical earlier version of the tale incorporating the abdication motif. Thus the old practice of basing interpretations on genetic deductions is reversed, and historical considerations lead to the positing of new sources. In more general terms Konecny urges the thematic contrast between a weak monarchy at Worms, where Gunther allows himself to become Hagen's instrument, and a strong monarchy at Xanten, where there is no visible sign of aristocratic encroachment.

A contrast between Xanten and Worms is also the point of departure for Peter Czerwinski, who understands the former as a primitive culture predicated on force and the latter as a more advanced bureaucratic culture.⁴⁶ Siegfried, the exponent of primitive culture, must validate himself by an exercise of strength at Worms, but the challenge is averted and his energy is translated into formal service in the new hierarchy. The relations between Siegfried and Gunther are regulated by subordinating one to the other. Siegfried then takes over the Saxon campaign because Gunther can maintain his position only as long as he is exempt from the exercise of force. Love also works to socialize natural impulses, and Kriemhild's beauty is placed in the service of the court's larger interests.

The upshot of the wooing on Islant dramatizes the conflict between a primitive and a more advanced from of culture. When representatives of the primitive culture (Siegfried and Brünhild) are installed at Worms, they incite violence and jeopardize the hierarchical structure. Hagen's contradictory role in this situation is that he is technically a vassal in the hierarchical model, but refuses to subordinate himself and acts on his own initiative. The catastrophe in Hunland also proceeds from a disintegration of the new order in the face of uncontrolled violence. What Czerwinski proposes is another version of the “two-world hypothesis,” but despite his references to twelfth-century territorialization, his reading is more in keeping with W. J. Schröder's symbolical interpretation than with the more recent historical interpretations.

A summary by Gert Kaiser may serve as the final example in this group.⁴⁷ It combines sociohistorical and reception analysis by seeking to identify a socially distinct readership. Following Jan-Dirk Müller, Kaiser argues that the trouble arises because Brünhild misunderstands Siegfried's service as that of an unfree ministerialis, but he goes on to suggest that the view of service in the Nibelungenlied stands in direct opposition to the approval of service in Arthurian epic and the romans d'antiquite'. The Nibelungenlied poet rejects the idea of service precisely because it is tainted by association with the class of ministeriales. Part II is in effect a conservative celebration of voluntary loyalty in opposition to obligatory service, but the ideological message is esthetically rescued by Hagen's private pact with Rüdeger in defiance of strict feudal loyalty. Kaiser thus goes a step further than Müller, who suggested only involuntary echoes of social tensions. Kaiser assigns these tensions to the thematic fabric of the poem.

CONCLUSION

The status of Nibelungenlied research at the end of our period is conveniently represented by fourteen articles from a conference held in Hohenems in September of 1979 and published the following year.⁴⁸ These papers are remarkable for the lack of continuity they display. None pursues the text-interpretive model prevalent in the period 1950-65, and only one attaches to the sociohistorical tradition of 1965-80. Significantly, the one exception, an important essay by Ursula Hennig, levels some telling criticism at such proponents of historical interpretation as Szövérffy, Ihlenburg, and Jan-Dirk Müller.⁴⁹ Against Müller she argues that eigenholt does not mean ministerialis but rather ‘bondsman’. Brünhild's description of Siegfried as eigenholt in stanzas 620 and 803 does not therefore constitute a subtle misunderstanding of feudal distinctions; it is a deliberately exaggerated provocation. Henning denies that feudal concepts have motivating force in the Nibelungenlied and reasserts the importance of literary comprehension. By virtue of its exclusions, then, the Hohenems conference would seem to mark the end of an era.

Equally remarkable is the conference's thematic consistency in another area. No fewer than six of the fourteen contributions are connected in some way with oral-formulaic composition.⁵⁰ Some make positive use of the theory, but others are cautious about it. In a paper independent of similar suggestions made a year earlier by Michael Curschmann, Norbert Voorwinden arrives at the conclusion that the Klage was composed chiefly on the basis of a preliterary transmission of the Nibelung story.⁵¹ Burghart Wachinger, this time with explicit reference to Curschmann, comes to the opposite conclusion, that the Klage is based on a definite text of the Nibelungenlied, although it may in turn have contributed to the final shape of that epic as we know it.⁵² Both agree that the transmission of these texts was more open to oral alteration than has traditionally been assumed. Achim Masser solidifies the evidence for oral transmission by identifying oral doublets inserted at different points in the written text of the Nibelungenlied.⁵³ Peter K. Stein, on the other hand, reduces the significance of oral-formulaic analysis by showing that the formulism in a text of Orendel is literary in nature.⁵⁴

The period of oral-formulaic analysis as applied to the Nibelungenlied corresponds roughly to the period of sociohistorical analysis; Franz Bäuml's first relevant study appeared in 1967 and his latest in the Hohenems volume of 1980.⁵⁵ On the other hand, the theory as it pertains to Germanic belongs more generally speaking to the preceding period of textual study, which began with the Beowulf article by Francis P. Magoun, Jr., in 1953.⁵⁶ Oral-formulaic analysis occupies an ambiguous position in both periods. It is both textual and nontextual, historical and non-historical. It is textual because it adheres closely to the phrasing of the poem and seeks to account precisely for that phrasing, but it is non-textual because it causes the reader to retreat quickly into the obscurity of textlessness. It is historical because it provides a genetic explanation of the poem and probes the context of literacy, but it is nonhistorical because it posits earlier versions that are not readily distinguishable from the extant ones. It does not, for example, provide an instrument for measuring the differences between the Nibelungenlied of 1200, the “Ältere Not” of 1160-70, and Saxo's carmen of Grimhild's perfidy from 1131. It is in any event noninterpretive because the art of preliterary criticism has yet to be evolved. That nearly half the contributions in the Hohenems volume grow out of the oral-formulaic debate in itself signals a retreat from the interpretive efforts of the previous decades.

Subtracting a study by Stefan Sonderegger on conversational language in the Nibelungenlied and a plenary address by Werner Schröder, we are left with five papers on various topics. Werner Hoffmann provides a helpful review of discussions in the literary histories from Gervinus to Bertau.⁵⁷ Walter Haug, in the tradition of Kurt Wais, undertakes a comparison with a bridal-quest story in the Mabinogion.⁵⁸ Alois Wolf revives Panzer's problem of French sources and suggests motival and scenic similarities, especially to the cycle of Guillaume d'Orange.⁵⁹ Uwe Meves returns to the Passau archives and suggests that the literary patronage of König Rother may underlie the acknowledgment of Wolfger's patronage in the Nibelungenlied.⁶⁰ Otfrid Ehrismann adopts a psychological angle in contrasting Parts I and II and locating the superior appeal of the latter in its therapeutic exorcism of death.⁶¹ What these contributions have in common is an attempt to extract new perspectives from traditional approaches. A reading of the volume as a whole suggests a temporary lack of consensus on the direction Nibelungenlied studies should take and hence an open prospect.

This sense of equilibrium, in contrast to the decisive critical initiatives of 1950-65 and 1965-80, also emerges from the most important recent contribution to Nibelungenlied studies, Werner Hoffmann's fifth revised edition of the Metzler volume Das Nibelungenlied (1982), originally published in collaboration with Gottfried Weber in 1961.⁶² In its latest form this book has undergone not only a great development in coverage, which makes it the indispensable guide, but also a shift in emphasis. The first edition, presumably under Weber's influence, largely accepted Friedrich Panzer's revolution (e.g., pp. 13-16) and participated in the ensuing descriptivist redefinition of the task (e.g., pp. 63-64). Hoffmann's revision of 1982 rejects Panzer's philological conclusions (pp. 53-54), provides an ample review of the Norse texts and the relevant source questions (pp. 47-56), and allows cautiously for the usefulness of diachronic study in the interpretive project (p. 61).⁶³

It is not the task of this chapter to propose yet another interpretation of the Nibelungenlied but rather to suggest a strategy and outline the parameters of interpretation. Clearly a close reading of the text is as fundamental now as it was in 1950, and the sociohistorical studies of 1965-80 have just as clearly widened our perspective on the text. But both these approaches, which undertook to root the Nibelungenlied more firmly in the contemporary scene, have failed to fulfill that promise. The literary readings of 1950-65 limited the context too exclusively to courtly romance, particularly to Parzival, all or large parts of which were written later. The sociohistorical analyses disregarded the literary context altogether. The Nibelungenlied has therefore remained in the isolation about which Dürrenmatt, Panzer, and later critics complained.

The strategy proposed in Chapters 5-7 aims to anchor the poem not only in contemporary Arthurian epic but also in the more general context of German literature during the period 1150-1200, including the immediate sources, the “Ältere Not” and the “Brünhildenlied.” These poems were also a part of twelfth-century German literature and contributed to the literary framework in which the author of the Nibelungenlied worked. Just as the historical critics have taught us to hear institutional echoes in the text, so too we should learn to identify literary echoes. Perhaps most neglected in its formative role is the minstrel epic, especially König Rother. A glance at this tradition reveals a series of literary ironies. We may see in Rüdeger the subverted delegate wooer, the trickster tricked, the comic figure of tradition recast in a tragic role. Similarly, Siegfried inherits both the roles of wooer and of delegate wooer from bridal-quest romance. The conventions of this form shed light on a number of traditionally difficult scenes: the puzzling apprehension of Siegfried's parents when he declares his intention to woo Kriemhild, the obsession with finery, his journey “in recken wîse,” Kriemhild's reluctance, the discordant hostility between the suitor and the bride's family in the notorious confrontation of Adventure 3, the magic cloak and extravagant trickery in Islant, Siegfried's fictitious identity as Gunther's vassal, his rescue force from Nibelungenland, and the comic doubling of his role as both suitor and delegate in Adventure 9. When the listeners around 1200 heard these scenes, they recognized the literary background, and when the happy-go-lucky wooer was transformed into the tragic victim of Adventure 16, they appreciated the discrepancy between the old convention and the new creation.

More than a few listeners would have been familiar with Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneide and would have pondered the distance between marital comedy and marital tragedy. They would have been acquainted with the new idealization of marriage, if not in Guillaume d'Angleterre, at least in Hartmann's epics. In some form they would have known the Hellenistic tradition of family fidelity and domestic reintegration, for example the stories of Faustinianus and Crescentia in the Kaiserchronik. The family disintegrations of the Nibelungenlied would have echoed harshly against this happier legacy.

More learned listeners would have known something of the tradition of universal history reflected in the Annolied and Kaiserchronik. If they knew of Franko's foundation at Xanten, they were in a position to connect Siegfried's preeminence with the idea of national emergence. The anti-Roman story of Adelger in the Kaiserchronik and the anti-Byzantine barbs in König Rother would have promoted such an understanding. Franco-German competition was no less a part of the political scene than the disparagement of Rome and Constantinople. The elevation of Siegfried could very well have been perceived as an epic counterthrust to the French Roland, well known from the Rolandslied, as well as to the Greek Alexander and the Roman Aeneas. Regional politics was also a factor in contemporary literature, as the Annolied, Heinrich von Veldeke's Servatius, and the Soest claim to the Nibelung catastrophe illustrate. Regionalism clarifies the Austro-Hohenstaufen bias against Bavarians and Saxons, as well as Passau's counterclaim to possession of the true transmission of the legend.

These general considerations can be further refined by measuring the Nibelungenlied against the immediate sources. Part II in particular lends itself to such comparison and permits us to isolate the poet's concerns. He rehabilitates Hagen in no fewer than five new adventures designed to vindicate his standing among the Burgundians. Breeding, candor, loyalty, kinship, and friendship are the values the poet espouses. Ferdinand Urbanek produced interesting evidence for advocacy of family loyalty and fast friendship, connected with contemporary Austro-Bavarian tensions, underlying König Rother, and some analogous political background might be surmised for the Nibelungenlied.⁶⁴ Rüdeger's dilemma in Adventure 37 could be making an immediate political point. In any event, the resurrection of Hagen from his treachery in Part I and the reintegration of kith and kin in Part II are evident when our knowledge of the “Ältere Not” is brought to bear.

Siegfried is also promoted from a lesser role in the “Brünhildenlied” to more heroic dimensions in the Nibelungenlied. In his case as well as Hagen's, a study of the text's development from earlier versions produces evidence against the descriptivist hypotheses. These hypotheses (e.g., W. J. Schröder, Weber, Falk) have suggested a pattern of weakness, falseness, and prevarication subtending the catastrophe of the Nibelungenlied. They subscribe to what I have called the “crime and punishment” interpretation, the idea that Siegfried, Hagen, and the others contract a guilt that they must ultimately expiate. A historical reading against the sources suggests rather that they are heroic figures caught in the traditional impasse of heroic action. They must die, for that is the generic law of heroic literature, but they transcend their fate with a display of personal qualities. They do so in different ways. Siegfried's display is limited to an exhibition of matchless strength; he has the surplus vitality but also the unconsciousness of youth. Hagen is older, more experienced, more vulnerable, but completely aware of the world around him. His heroism is the triumph of consciousness. In this sense, perhaps, the Nibelungenlied fits into the structure of contemporary Arthurian romance, in which the two-part structure cultivated by both Hartmann and Wolfram marks out a growth from innocence to knowledge. In the Arthurian epics the trajectory is constructive and optimistic. In the Nibelungenlied it is tragic, but not necessarily pessimistic. The moral qualities displayed in Part II are no less triumphant for being ill-fated.

Kriemhild too appears in a somewhat different light if she is viewed in the mirror of the sources. Critics have frequently remarked on her rehabilitation in redaction C and the Klage, compared to the standard redaction B, and have argued a difference in interpretation. But if we in turn compare the Kriemhild of B to her ancestor in the “Ältere Not,” we may find reasons to moderate our judgment. The poets of the “Ältere Not” and the Nibelungenlied were both heir to the idea of Kriemhild's unequivocal “perfidy against her brothers.” The poet of the “Ältere Not” does not appear to have deviated from this image. Kriemhild cajoles Etzel into the treacherous invitation of her relatives and personally dispatches a letter with false promises. She confronts Hagen directly on his arrival then undertakes machinations behind Etzel's back to instigate an attack on the guests. When all else fails, she incites her young son to strike Hagen in the face in order to precipitate the fray. Without a preface telling of Siegfried's death, these actions appear in a clearly negative light.

But the Nibelungenlied poet altered the portrait completely by adding Kriemhild's youthful love story, her betrayal by Hagen and her brothers, her four and a half years of widowed grief cut off from her family in Worms, and the seizure of her bride price. In this version her action is amply motivated. It is no longer a question of perfidy but of marital fidelity of the sort encouraged by ecclesiastical emphasis on the permanent union of hearts and by such models of marital faith as Hartmann's Enîta or Wolfram's Sigûne. A historical perspective on Kriemhild suggests not that the B and C poets had substantially different views of her character but that there was a consistent and linear unburdening of her, undertaken first by the B poet and then pursued logically by the C poet.

After a prolonged period of reaction against source criticism and literary-historical analysis the time may be ripe to experiment once again with these traditional approaches. The Nibelungenlied should indeed be integrated more decisively into the period in which it was written, but this procedure stands to profit no less from the study of contemporary literature than from the study of contemporary history. Only a small part of that literature has been touched on here. The rest remains to be explored.

Notes

1. Dürrenmatt, Das Nibelungenlied im Kreis der höfischen Dichtung; Panzer, Studien zum Nibelungenliede.

2. Heusler, “Die Lieder der Lücke im Codex Regius” and Die altgermanische Dichtung, 2d rev. ed.

3. See note 6 to Chapter 6.

4. Compare Dürrenmatt, p. 7, with Panzer, Studien zum Nibelungenliede, p. 3, and Das Nibelungenlied, pp. 11-13.

5. Mergell, “Nibelungenlied und höfischer Roman.” On Dürrenmatt see pp. 5-6.

6. Mergell bases his view of Hagen on stanza 2,371, but cf. W. J. Schröder, “Das Nibelungenlied: Versuch einer Deutung,” p. 125, note 1; rpt. p. 127, note 1. Also Gentry, “Trends in ‘Nibelungenlied’ Research since 1949,” p. 128.

7. W. J. Schröder, “Das Nibelungenlied,” p. 58; rpt. p. 60.

8. Heusler, Nibelungensage und Nibelungenlied, p. 58: “Heroische Geschichten bequemen sich ungern einem lehrhaften Leitsatz.”

9. W. Schröder, “Die Tragödie Kriemhilts,” pp. 41-43; rpt. pp. 49-51.

10. Tonnelat, La Chanson des Nibelungen.

11. Maurer, Leid.

12. Ibid., pp. 21 and 31.

13. W. Schröder, “Die Tragödie” rpt. pp. 73, 80, 86, 93, 98-99, 149.

14. Bostock, “The Message of the ‘Nibelungenlied.’”

15. On the often meaningless use of übermuot in the Nibelungenlied see Wachinger, Studien zum Nibelungenlied, p. 105, and Sacker, “On Irony and Symbolism,” pp. 271-72.

16. Mowatt, “Studies towards an Interpretation of the ‘Nibelungenlied.’”

17. Sacker, “On Irony and Symbolism.”

18. In general see Hoffmann's just assessment of the Anglo-American contributions in “Die englische und amerikanische Nibelungenforschung 1959-62.”

19. Panzer, Das Nibelungenlied: Entstehung und Gestalt.

20. Menéndez Pidal, La Chanson de Roland y el neotradicionalismo.

21. Wachinger, Studien zum Nibelungenlied.

22. Weber, Das Nibelungenlied: Problem und Idee.

23. A similar suggestion had already been made by W. J. Schröder, “Das Nibelungenlied: Versuch einer Deutung,” pp. 142-43; rpt. pp. 144-45.

24. Nagel, “Zur Interpretation und Wertung des Nibelungenliedes.”

25. Nagel, Das Nibelungenlied: Stoff—Form—Ethos.

26. Ibid., e.g., pp. 81, 97, 118, 128.

27. Representative of this aftermath are Mowatt and Sacker, The Nibelungenlied: An Interpretative Commentary; Bekker, The Nibelungenlied: A Literary Analysis; Gentry, Triuwe and vriunt in the Nibelungenlied. It might be noted, however, that Mowatt's and Sacker's Commentary grew out of their articles from 1961 and that Bekker's book built on articles from 1966 and 1967: “Kingship in the Nibelungenlied” and “The ‘Eigenmann’-Motif in the Nibelungenlied.”

28. Von See, “Die Werbung um Brünhild” and “Freierprobe und Königinnenzank.”

29. Bumke, “Sigfrids Fahrt ins Nibelungenland”; “Die Eberjagd im Daurel und in der Nibelungendichtung”; “Die Quellen der Brünhildfabel im Nibelungenlied.”

30. Wapnewski, “Rüdigers Schild.”

31. Lohse, “Die Beziehungen zwischen der Thidrekssaga und den Handschriften des Nibelungenliedes”; Wisniewski, Die Darstellung des Niflungenun-terganges in der Thidrekssaga.

32. Hoffmann, Das Nibelungenlied, p. 54.

33. King, “The Message of the ‘Nibelungenlied.’”

34. Neumann, Das Nibelungenlied in seiner Zeit.

35. Neumann, “Schichten der Ethik im Nibelungenliede.” Cf. Nagel's essay “Stoffzwang der Uberlieferung in mittelhochdeutscher Dichtung.”

36. Heusler, Nibelungensage und Nibelungenlied, p. 57; Neumann, Das Nibelungenlied in seiner Zeit, p. 29.

37. Neumann, Das Nibelungenlied in seiner Zeit, pp. 65-105 and 109-21.

38. Falk, Das Nibelungenlied in seiner Epoche, p. 20.

39. A briefer example of the “crime and punishment hypothesis” from this period is Wisniewski's “Das Versagen des Königs.” Wisniewski concentrates on the disastrous consequences of Gunther's weakness, which she places in the context of medieval speculum regale literature.

40. Beyschlag, “Das Motiv der Macht bei Siegfrieds Tod.”

41. Szövérffy, “Das Nibelungenlied: Strukturelle Beobachtungen und Zeitgeschichte.”

42. Ihlenburg, Das Nibelungenlied: Problem und Gehalt.

43. Müller, “Sivrit: künec—man—eigenholt.” Müller criticizes Ihlenburg on p. 116.

44. Birkhan, “Zur Entstehung und Absicht des Nibelungenliedes.”

45. Konecny, “Das Sozialgefüge am Burgundenhof.” A more likely source for Sigemund's abdication would seem to be King Latinus' abdication in favor of Aeneas in Veldeke's Eneide, vv. 13,287-91.

46. Czerwinski, “Das Nibelungenlied: Widersprüche höfischer Gewaltreglementierung.”

47. Kaiser, “Deutsche Heldenepik.”

48. “Hohenemser Studien zum Nibelungenlied” in Montfort: Vierteljahresschrift für Geschichte und Gegenwart Vorarlbergs, 32 (1980), 181-381 (7-207).

49. Henning, “Herr und Mann: Zur Ständegliederung im Nibelungenlied.”

50. For earlier reactions to the oral-formulaic theory in Germany see Fromm, “Der oder die Dichter des Nibelungenliedes?”; W. Hoffmann, Mittelhochdeutsche Heldendichtung, pp. 53-59; Heinzle, Mittelhochdeutsche Dietrichepik, pp. 67-92; von See, “Was ist Heldendichtung?,” esp. rpt. pp. 168-76.

51. Curschmann, “‘Nibelungenlied’ und ‘Nibelungenklage’”; Voorwinden, “Nibelungenklage und Nibelungenlied.”

52. Wachinger, “Die ‘Klage’ und das Nibelungenlied.”

53. Masser, “Von Alternativstrophen und Vortragsvarianten im Nibelungenlied.”

54. Stein, “Orendel 1512: Probleme und Möglichkeiten der Anwendung der theory of oral-formulaic poetry bei der literaturhistorischen Interpretation eines mittelhochdeutschen Textes.”

55. Bäuml and Ward, “Zur mündlichen Überlieferung des Nibelungenliedes,” and Bäuml, “Zum Verständnis mittelalterlicher Mitteilungen.” Since the writing of this report Bäuml has contributed a further article, “Medieval Texts and the Two Theories of Oral-Formulaic Composition.”

56. For a history and critique of the oral-formulaic theory as applied to the Nibelungenlied see Sperberg-McQueen, “An Analysis of Recent Work on Nibelungenlied Poetics.”

57. Hoffmann, “Das Nibelungenlied in der Literaturgeschichtsschreibung von Gervinus bis Bertau.”

58. Haug, “Normatives Modell oder hermeneutisches Experiment.”

59. Wolf, “Die Verschriftlichung der Nibelungensage und die französischdeutschen Literaturbeziehungen im Mittelalter.”

60. Meves, “Bischof Wolfger von Passau, sîn schrîber, meister Kuonrât und die Nibelungenüberlieferung.”

61. Ehrismann, “Archaisches und Modernes im Nibelungenlied: Pathos und Abwehr.”

62. Hoffmann, Heldendichtung II: Nibelungenlied (1961; rpt. 1964 and 1968; rev. 1974).

63. A similar shift away from the Nibelungenlied as sole arbiter of the tradition and toward greater consideration of other testimony is apparent in Nagel's essay “Noch einmal Nibelungenlied.” The same trend is visible in the Anglo-Saxon world in Hatto's “Medieval German” in Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry, 1:177, where he writes, “But it seems to the present writer that studies of Nibelung tradition which assume Heusler's theories to be passé, condemn themselves to swift oblivion.”

64. Urbanek, Kaiser, Grafen und Mäzene im König Rother, pp. 73-82.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in the Notes and the Works Cited:

ABäG	Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik.
BGDSL	Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur.
GLL	German Life and Letters.
GR	Germanic Review.
GRM	Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift.
	“Hohenemser Studien” “Hohenemser Studien zum Nibelungenlied.” In Montfort: Vierteljahresschrift für Geschichte und Gegenwart Vorarlbergs, 32 (1980), 181-381 [7-207].
JIG	Jahrbuch für internationale Germanistik.
MGH	Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
MLR	Modern Language Review.
MTU	Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters.
WW	Wirkendes Wort.
ZDA	Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur.

Works Cited

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