Rodensteiner
The Rodensteiner (also Schnellertsgeist ) is a German legend whose place of action is the middle Odenwald .
content
The so-called Schnellertsherr is said to lead an army of ghosts when wars are imminent, which allegedly roam noisily from the Schnellert ruins through a certain farm, then along the Gersprenz and through Fränkisch-Crumbach to the Rodenstein ruins , and from there to Schnellerts again at the end of the war to return. This legend can be traced back to the first half of the 18th century. It is related to the ghost stories from the wild hunt and may have come about through an inexplicable acoustic phenomenon. Many farmers from the area around the Rodenstein ruins asserted that they had witnessed the ghost procession; and the Schnellertsherr is said to have had his horse shod by a blacksmith in Franconian-Crumbach.
Historical core
When in the second quarter of the 18th century more and more people claimed to have observed the ghost army and interpreted this as a warning of wars, etc., Count von Erbach had the testimony of these alleged witnesses published in the files (1742–1748). This quickly increased the popularity of the legend throughout Germany .
The Schnellertsgeist was only identified at the end of the 18th century with a member of the von Rodenstein family , which died out in the male line in 1671 , mostly with Hans III due to the eventful life history . to Rodenstein . This knight is said to have been bellicose during his lifetime and therefore went into battle despite the requests of his pregnant wife. His wife died after the birth of a dead boy, but had cursed her husband for always having to get out of his grave and warn people when war threatened to break out.
Little is actually known about the history of Schnellerts Castle near Ober-Kainsbach . It probably only existed for a very short time.
reception
This legend was first processed in the ballad Der Kriegs- und Friedensherold by the German poet August Friedrich Langbein (1807). This was followed by many other designs of the material in literature and music, especially up to the middle of the 19th century. After the Wars of Liberation (1840s), the figure of the Rodensteiner changed from a wild knight to a warrior who fought loyally for the emperor, under the influence of the national tendencies. The Schnellertsherr was reportedly last heard in 1914. In his book Rodenstein (1927), the Baltic German writer Werner Bergengruen endeavored to bring the various legend motifs to a common denominator.
The German author Joseph Victor von Scheffel de- romanticized the myth in some poems written since 1855. The Rodensteiner became a drunkard with him, who wandered around as a ghost to satisfy his lust for alcohol and passed this addiction on to German students. In this form, the ghostly figure found its way into student songs in Germany.
literature
- Elisabeth Frenzel : Substances of world literature. A lexicon of longitudinal sections of the history of poetry (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 300). 9th, revised and expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-30009-5 , p. 683.
- Hanns-Peter Mederer : The entertaining superstition. Reception of legends in novels, stories and everyday literature between 1840 and 1855 . Aachen 2005 (= Diss. Hamburg 2005).
