The Wibelungen
The Wibelungen; World history from the legend is a writing by Richard Wagner , which he wrote in Dresden in 1848 .
In the years before, Wagner had dealt intensively with the German sagas, especially during a spa stay in Marienbad (1845). He worked out the entire Grail myth and the Nibelung saga and planned to write a musical drama about Emperor Barbarossa (Friedrich Rotbart), but then limited himself to the prose version and turned to the Siegfried drama (initially Siegfried's death) and later to the ring tetralogy .
In his “Wibelungen” he formulates his view of German legends and the history of royalty in Europe. He calls the "Indian Caucasus" ( Afghanistan ) as "original seat of all religions, all languages, all Kinghood" attacks the Troy myth and constructed from a hike of the idealized kingdom of the Franks : "The original city was Troy , was there the Original royalty. “The Germans are heirs to the Franks and their king can derive the right to world domination from this. Wagner explains the worldview of Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa:
- “In the German people the oldest genuinely justified royal family in the world has been preserved: it comes from a son of God, who is called Siegfried to his next generation, but Christ to the rest of the peoples of the earth; He performed the most glorious deed for the salvation and happiness of his race and of the peoples of the earth that grew out of him, and for this deed he also suffered death. The next heirs of his deed and the power gained by it are the "Nibelungs", to whom the world belongs in the name and for the happiness of all peoples. The Germans are the oldest people, their blood related king is a “Nibelung”, and at their head he has to assert world domination. There is therefore no right to any property or enjoyment in this world that does not come from this king, must first be sanctified by his bestowal or confirmation: all property or enjoyment that the emperor does not give or confirm is in itself without rights and applies as robbery, because the emperor confers and confirms in consideration of the happiness, possession or enjoyment of all, whereas the unauthorized acquisition of the individual is a robbery of all. "
Wagner draws the link from the Guelphs to the Nibelungs (Wibelungen), from Charlemagne to the emperor of Friedrich Barbarossa, to the importance of the legendary Nibelungen hoard and the Grail. Wagner's Wibelungen script is divided into the following headings:
- The original kingship
- the Nibelungen
- Wibelingen or Wibelungen
- The Guelphs
- The Nibelungenhort in the Franconian royal family
- Origin and development of the Nibelungen myth
- The Roman imperial dignity and the Roman tribal legend
- Trojan descent of the Franks
- Real and ideal content of the Nibelungen hoard
- The Ghibelin Empire and Friedrich I.
- Incorporation of the ideal content of the hoard into the "holy grail"
- Historical record of the real content of the hoard in "actual possession"
In the last paragraph it says in conclusion: “The poor people sang, read and printed the Nibelungenlieder, the only remaining inheritance from the hoard. Belief in this never ceased and people were convinced that the hoard had been sunk in an old mountain of gods, in a mountain like the one from which Siegfried once won the Nibelung. But the great emperor himself had brought him back to the mountain in order to preserve the hoard for better times. There, in the Kyffhäuser , he is now sitting, the old "Red Beard" Friedrich, with the treasures of the Nibelungs around him, with the sharp sword at his side that once slew the fierce dragon. "
bibliography
- Richard Wagner: Collected writings and poems . 4th edition, Volume 2, Leipzig 1907, pp. 115–155. ( online as PDF file; 115 kB)