Heroic saga

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As Heldensagen narrative substances are the heroic age referred. Its contents are partly mythical, partly historical. Their form, recognizable to us, at the same time poetically formed, they first took on in so-called hero songs and later in sweeping heroic epics . Heroic legends can be found in the early period of almost all advanced civilizations as well as in the prescribed period of the Germanic peoples.

Hero poetry and legend

The question of whether there was a heroic saga before and alongside the heroic poetry and who created it was first scientifically examined in the romantic era. The Germanist and folklorist Wilhelm Grimm sees both of them "emerging from the midst of the whole people." He speaks of a "poetic soul of the people" and calls the song the "living mouth of legend". Herder and Goethe also followed this thought. Wilhelm Grimm formulates: “The peculiarity of the (...) songs is based on the fact that, initially, the intention is not to present the content of the saga, which they presuppose to be known, but rather to explain a single point, like the poetic mood of it Time promises, lift out, and let the full splendor of poetry fall on it. Only what is useful for its understanding is given from the rest of the saga, or it is remembered. "

There was considerable opposition to this notion among ancient Germanists, especially the Swiss scholar Andreas Heusler and his school, which was debated controversially around the middle of the 20th century:

While the Heusler camp insisted that poetry, especially the hero song , was an original creation by ingenious songwriters, who thereby initiated the formation of legends, opponents such as Felix Genzmer and Hans Kuhn took the view that the hero saga was older than the heroic poetry that a saga tradition existed even before the song poetry and that the singers drew their material from existing old legends and only brought them into the poetic song form that we can recognize.

“Hero sagas lived only in songs,” Heusler put it, “what is conventionally called hero sagas is hero poetry, created and passed on and trained by poets. (...) The content of the song corresponded to a legend. ” Hermann Schneider added:“ The individual creates the hero song and with it the hero saga ”and“ Whoever created the Dietrichslied created the Dietrichssage ”. F. Wolters & C. Petersen wrote: "Nowhere does the heroic saga live outside of the heroic poem (...)" and Jan de Vries confessed: "Sagas can only be spread and preserved in song form."

On the other hand, Felix Genzmer and Hans Kuhn argued that only a fraction of the rich treasure trove of legends could have risen to the poetic height of the song, just as not every Greek legend rose to the heyday of tragedy . The old Germanist Georg Baesecke pointed out obvious parallels between the Greek Ikaros saga and the Germanic Wieland poetry.

Heusler, however, softened his strict doctrine himself by admitting that unbound "warrior sagas" could have existed before the so-called "Urlied". With the exception of a “local legend”, H. Schneider inevitably contradicted his own thesis. He finally made a total about-face: “We are realizing more and more that far from all literature and before all literature there must have been an immeasurably rich and extensive narrative.” He then formulates even more blatantly against Heusler: “With this view (meaning Heusler's theory ) –Quod non est in cantu, non est in mundo- should be put to an end. ” F. Genzmer also expresses himself ambiguously in the scholarly dispute: Does he use the equation of song and saying in his Edda collection beforehand:“ It must have been the Goths who were the first, around 400, to create the art of the rod rhyming heroic song and thus the oldest Germanic heroic saga ”,) so two pages later he relocated the saga before the poetry was written:“ It came to the poet no longer at all on simply telling the well-known legend: he wanted to reflect the events in the speeches of his heroes. ”The haggler opponent Hans Kuhn can then a Also in the obituary of the now deceased attest: “He was the first to again emphatically assert that hero sagas also existed outside of poetry.” Kuhn documented how important this question was to him in his own publication. The Germanist Siegbert A. Warwitz contrasted the opposing positions of the fighting schools in his monograph as early as 1963 without taking sides . In favor of the more recent theory, he points out that the whalebone rune box by Auzon near Clermont-Ferrand (today in the British Museum in London ) shows a scene and figures from the Wieland saga on the left-hand side of the picture, which do not appear in the song, but do should be part of the legend and that many songs begin with a "hearsay": Ik gihorta that seggen (Hildebrandlied), Thaet he fram Sigemunde secgan hyrde (Beowulf 875), Heyrtha ek segia i sogum fornum (Oddrunargratr 1), which indicate predecessors could. For the Heusler side, this is a mere topos like the (not literally meant) common beginning of a fairy tale Once upon a time… . On the other hand, in favor of Heusler's theory, in some songs (such as the Atlakvida) there is an almost complete correspondence between song and legend. After checking the sources, he sums up that, despite a certain degree of plausibility of their own, both theories have not yet been clearly substantiated from testimonies from the time (e.g. Latin sources) and that this question has not really been clarified from a science-critical perspective. The old Germanist Fritz Martini also deliberately stays out of the controversy and formulates objectively neutral in his literary history: “From the attitude to life of warriors, from the force and fateful tragedy of these downfalls, from the admiration for the deeds and from the mourning for the leaders Germanic hero poetry has been developed. "

The problem has a literary historical significance insofar as the question cannot be clearly clarified whether the legacy of legends is due to the poetic creativity of individual poets or - according to the tradition of the Romantics - to the popular productivity of the many. German studies have been dealing with this topic until recently.

Myth and History

Statue of King Arthur on the tomb of Emperor Maximilian I ( Peter Vischer , 1512 )

In most of the sagas, myth and history are closely interwoven. Historically documented famous personalities such as the Hun king Attila or the Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great can be found in the creation of sagas and legends.

On the other hand, the world of legends also lives from mythical figures to whom (because of the greater credibility?) It even assigns historical places such as Siegfried von Xanten , Brunhild von Iceland or Dietrich von Bern . Historically documented events such as the fall of the Burgundy , but also fictitious events such as the adventures of the Arthurian round mix historical and mythical events. The Arthurian legend takes place historically in the 5th century AD. The Camelot farm , where Arthur resides with his round table , is now located in various places in southern England for tourist reasons. Neither the fabulous place nor the fabulous heroes like Iwein , Galahad , Erec , Lancelot , Gawein or Parzival can be identified as historical figures from a scientific point of view. Their deeds, too, are products of the imagination of brilliant poets, at least not verifiable.

Nevertheless, medievalists have tried again and again to make historical identifications of mythical figures. For example, the Viennese old Germanist Otto Höfler tried to establish a connection between the historical Cheruscan prince Arminius and the legendary hero Siegfried and a connection with the battle in the Teutoburg Forest (9 AD). But even the historical Theodoric the Great and the legendary Dietrich von Bern can only be brought together with difficulty, both in terms of time and space. In the Middle High German Nibelungenlied , but also in the Edda collection , the mixing and changing of the mentality of several old heroic songs with medieval knightly and Christian ideas, but also the connection of legendary and real locations, of mythical and historical events, is particularly clear for the expert.

Examples of heroic sagas

Well-known non-European examples from pre-Christian times are the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh , Mahabharata and Ramayana from India and the Persian Schahname from Firdausi . In addition, all of Homer's epics must be counted as well as generally the legends about Heracles , Theseus , the Argonauts , Achilles , Odysseus and Aeneas .

Besides the songs of the Edda, the following are mentioned here:

Further examples are the stories about Ilya Muromets or the South Slavic songs and legends about the hero Marko and the battle on the blackbird field , as well as the Finnish Kalevala and the Russian byline .

literature

  • Heinrich Beck , Hermann Reichert , Heinrich Tiefenbach : hero, hero poetry and hero legend. In: Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, Heiko Steuer (eds.): Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 14. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1999, ISBN 3-11-080063-2 , pp. 260–282.
  • Heinrich Beck (Hrsg.): Heroic saga and heroic poetry in Germanic . (= Supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 2). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1988, ISBN 3-11-011175-6 . In this:
    • Alfred Ebenbauer : Heldenlied and “Historisches Lied” in the early Middle Ages - and before. Pp. 15-34.
    • Thomas Klein : Ancient legend and hero legend . Pp. 115-147.
    • Edith Marold : Change and constancy in the representation of the figure of Dietrich von Bern. Pp. 149-182.
    • Alois Wolf : The writing of European heroic sagas as a mediaeval cultural problem. Pp. 305-325.
  • Felix Genzmer : Prehistoric and early historical time. In: Heinz Otto Burger (Hrsg.): Annals of German literature. History of German literature from its beginnings to the present. A joint effort by numerous specialists. 1st edition, JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1952, pp. 1-36.
  • Felix Genzmer: The Germanic heroic saga and their poetic renewal , In: Wirkendes Wort 5 (1954/55) p. 1 ff
  • Felix Genzmer: Vorzeitsaga und Heldenlied , In: Festschrift for P. Kluckhohn u. H. Schneider , Tübingen 1948 (revised copy by K. Hauck, Zur Germanisch-Deutschen Heldensage , 16 essays on the new state of research, Darmstadt 1961, p. 102 ff)
  • Wilhelm Grimm : Die deutsche Heldensage 1829 (photomechanical reprint as 4th edition, obtained from R. Steig, Darmstadt 1957)
  • Otto Gschwandler: Oldest genres of Germanic poetry. In: Klaus von See (Ed.): European Early Middle Ages . Wiesbaden 1985 (= Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft 6), pp. 91–123.
  • Walter Haug : Andreas Heusler's heroic saga model: premises, criticism and alternative design. In: ZfdA 104 (1975), pp. 273-292.
  • Karl Hauck : On the Germanic-German hero legend. 16 articles on the new state of research. (= Paths of Research 14) WBG, Darmstadt 1965. Therein:
  • Andreas Heusler : Nibelungen saga and Nibelungenlied. 6th edition, Ruhfus, Dortmund 1965.
  • Andreas Heusler: Song and epic in Germanic poetry . Darmstadt 1956
  • Hans Kuhn : heroic legend before and outside of poetry. In: Hermann Schneider (Hrsg.): Edda, Skalden, Saga: Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Felix Genzmer. Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 1952, pp. 262–278, again in: Karl Hauck: Zur Germanisch-Deutschen Heldensage (= ways of research 14) pp. 173–194.
  • Niedner, Felix, Neckel, Gustav (eds.): Edda , Thule Collection, Volume 1: Heroic Poetry, Verlag Diederichs, Düsseldorf-Cologne 1963
  • Joachim Heinzle, Klaus Klein, Ute Obhof (eds.): The Nibelungs. Saga, epic, myth. Reichert, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 3-89500-347-6 .
  • Otto Höfler : Siegfried, Arminius and the Symbolism, Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 1961.
  • Fritz Martini : Germanic heroic legend, origin, development and essence of German heroic poetry , Berlin 1935.
  • Victor Millet: Germanic hero poetry in the Middle Ages. An introduction. 1st edition de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2008. ISBN 978-3-11-020102-4 .
  • Hermann Schneider : Germanic heroic legend: German heroic legend. Volume I. (= Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie, 10.1) 2nd unchanged edition with an afterword and addition by Ruth Wischnewski, de Gruyter, Berlin 1962.
  • Klaus von See: Germanic heroic legend. Substances, problems, methods. An introduction . 2nd unchanged edition, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, Wiesbaden 1981, ISBN 3-7997-7032-1 .
  • Jan de Vries : Hero song and legend . Utrecht 1959 (German edition: Francke, Bern-Munich 1961).
  • Siegbert Warwitz : The old Germanic heroic poetry and its relationship to the heroic saga , Münster 1963.

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Beck, Heinrich (Ed.): Hero sagas and hero poetry in Germanic . Berlin, New York 1988
  2. ↑ Karl Kerényi: The mythology of the Greeks - The hero stories . dtv, Munich 1992
  3. ↑ Hermann Jacobi: Das Râmâyaṇa. History and content along with concordance of the printed reviews. Friedrich Cohen, Bonn 1893. Reprint: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1970
  4. ^ Wilhelm Grimm: Die deutsche Heldensage 1829 (photomechanical reprint as 4th edition, obtained from R. Steig, Darmstadt 1957)
  5. ↑ Grimm, ibid p. 417
  6. ↑ Grimm, ibid p. 417
  7. ↑ Grimm, ibid p. 413
  8. ^ Andreas Heusler: Nibelungen saga and Nibelungenlied. 4th edition, Dortmund 1944
  9. ^ Genzmer, Felix: Vorzeitsaga und Heldenlied , In: Festschrift for P. Kluckhohn u. H. Schneider , Tübingen 1948 (revised copy by K. Hauck, Zur Germanisch-Deutschen Heldensage , 16 essays on the new state of research, Darmstadt 1961, p. 102 ff)
  10. ↑ Hans Kuhn: Heldensage before and outside of poetry , In: Edda, Skalden, Saga, Festschrift for F. Genzmer , Heidelberg 1952, p. 262 ff
  11. ^ Andreas Heusler: Nibelungen saga and Nibelungenlied. , 4th edition, Dortmund 1944, p. 164
  12. ^ Hermann Schneider: Germanische Heldensage , Vol. 1, Berlin 1962, p. 10
  13. ^ F. Wolters, C. Petersen: Heldensagen der Germanischen early times , Breslau 1921, p. 14
  14. ↑ Jan de Vries: Old Norse Literature History Vol. I, Berlin and Leipzig 1941, p. 34
  15. ↑ Felix Genzmer: The Germanic heroic legend and their poetic renewal, In: Wirkendes Wort 5 (1954/55) p. 1 ff
  16. ↑ Hans Kuhn: Heldensage before and outside of poetry , In: Edda, Skalden, Saga , Festschrift for F. Genzmer, Heidelberg 1952, p. 262 ff
  17. ↑ Georg Baesecke: The origin of the Wieland seal , PBB (Halle) 61 (1937) p. 368 ff)
  18. ↑ A. Heusler, Anzeiger fd A. 54 (1935) p. 105
  19. ^ Hermann Schneider: Germanische Heldensage , Vol. I, 2nd edition, Berlin 1962, p. 36
  20. ^ Hermann Schneider: Introduction to a presentation of the heroic saga , In: PBB 77 Tübingen 1955, p. 71 ff (reprinted by K. Hauck, Zur Germanisch-deutscher Heldensage , 16 essays on the new state of research, Darmstadt 1961, p. 316 ff)
  21. ^ K. Hauck, On the Germanic-German heroic saga , 16 essays on the new state of research, Darmstadt 1961, p. 322
  22. ↑ Niedner, Felix, Neckel, Gustav (Eds.): Translated u. commented v. F. Genzmer: Edda, hero poetry 1st volume, Thule Collection, Verlag Diederich, Düsseldorf 1963, p. 10
  23. ↑ Genzmer, ibid p. 12
  24. ^ Ibid Kuhn, epilogue p. 243
  25. ↑ Hans Kuhn: Heldensage before and outside of poetry , In: Edda, Skalden, Saga , Festschrift for F. Genzmer, Heidelberg 1952, p. 26
  26. ^ Siegbert Warwitz: The old Germanic hero poetry and its relationship to the hero saga , Münster 1963
  27. ↑ Warwitz, ibid. P. 86, ibid. Appendix Fig. 1
  28. ↑ Warwitz, ibid, pp. 84–90
  29. ^ Fritz Martini: Germanic heroic legend, origin, development and nature of German heroic poetry , Berlin 1935
  30. ^ Fritz Martini: Deutsche Literaturgeschichte , 11th edition, Stuttgart 1961. p. 4
  31. ^ Heinrich Beck, Hermann Reichert, Heinrich Tiefenbach: Held, heroic poetry and heroic saga. In: Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, Heiko Steuer (eds.): Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 14. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1999, pp. 260–282
  32. ^ Höfler Otto: Siegfried, Arminius and the Symbolism, Heidelberg 1961
  33. ^ Joachim Heinzle, Klaus Klein, Ute Obhof (eds.): The Nibelungs. Saga, epic, myth. Reichert, Wiesbaden 2003
  34. ↑ Niedner, Felix, Neckel, Gustav (eds.): Edda , Thule Collection, Volume 1: Heldendichtung, Verlag Diederichs, Düsseldorf-Cologne 1963