Nibelungenlied

The Nibelungenlied, 'Song of the Nibelungs', is a Middle High German epic written down around 1200 in the Danube region, by an unknown poet. It has about 2,400 four-line stanzas in 39 chapters called aventiuren. The first half tells how Siegfried, a dragon-slaying hero invulnerable after bathing in dragon's blood except for one spot, helps King Gunther win Brunhild and marries Gunther's sister Kriemhild. Quarrel between the queens leads to Siegfried's murder by Hagen, who spears him in the vulnerable spot and sinks his treasure in the Rhine.¹²

In the second half, Kriemhild marries Etzel, king of the Huns, whose model is Attila, and invites her brothers and Hagen to his court. There she takes revenge, and the story ends in a massacre in which almost everyone dies. The poet works older heroic legends of the migration period into a courtly romance of knights, feasts and etiquette, but leaves the tone grim. The poem was largely forgotten until the manuscript C was found in 1755 and it was hailed as Germany's national epic in the nineteenth century. Richard Wagner used it and the Norse Volsunga saga for his four-opera Ring cycle. Nationalist and later Nazi propaganda misused the poem, which is why its reception in Germany remains contested.¹²