Siegfriedbrunnen
Siegfriedbrunnen are fountains in the Odenwald or near it, where Siegfried , the protagonist of the Nibelungen saga , is said to have been murdered by Hagen von Tronje .
The Nibelungenlied is based on a heroic saga with basically typifying or anonymous descriptions of the place. Elements of the folk and homeland saga (e.g. remarks about Odenheim) were only added after editing. Due to different information in the traditional versions of the epic, different communities claim the scene of the crime, the Siegfriedsquelle , for themselves. Since a text-interpretative proof is hardly possible, these assumptions are based on circumstantial evidence, such as similarly worded hallway names, and a review of the conclusiveness of the action. However, the aim is not to determine a historical-geographical location, but to provide evidence that the author (s) or editor (s) used models from his (their) experiences for his (her) fictional story.
Historical and literary foundations
Siegfried saga and Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied is a medieval German epic that uses various legends to deal with events from the time of the Great Migration . Some of the people appearing are based on historical personalities.
Its historical core is the downfall of the Burgundy empire, which was founded in AD 413 during the migration of peoples by King Gundahari (Gunther) on the Middle Rhine around Worms and after attempts to expand on the left bank of the Rhine by the Western Roman military leader Flavius Aëtius in AD 436 with the help of Hunnic auxiliary troops was smashed. In the "Lex Burgundionum" (516), in addition to Gundahari, the kings Godomar (Gernot) and Gislahari (Giselher) are mentioned. In the epic are other historical events u. a. the death of the Huns king Attila ("Etzel") on the night of his wedding with the German Ildico in 453 .
The incorporated legends tell u. a. the story of the hero Siegfried, who after killing a dragon and bathing in dragon's blood becomes invulnerable through a horn armor, with the exception of a small spot on his back that was covered by a linden leaf during the bath. Hagen von Tronje takes advantage of this to murder Siegfried with a spear on a hunting trip after a cunningly arranged race to a spring - the Siegfriedsbrunnen - when the latter bends down to drink.
Author and manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied was first written down around 1200 on the basis of older oral traditions. It is written in Middle High German. The author is unknown. Research generally assumes that it originated in the area of the Diocese of Passau , to which Vienna also belonged at the time . The Passau bishop Wolfger von Erla is believed to be the client and patron . By the 16th century, over 35 verifiable manuscripts and fragments were created, the texts of which contain more or less large deviations. Therefore there was probably not a single author. The most important traditions are denoted by the letters A, B and C. Handwriting C is of particular importance for the determination of the Siegfried Fountain. Although it is older than manuscripts A and B, it represents the more recent version of the text and contains numerous revisions, some of which are considerable. The later manuscripts A and B are based on textual versions which in turn preceded the manuscript C. However, both the dating and the methods used are controversial in research. Overall, handwriting C gives the impression of an "improved edition" of the Nibelungenlied specifically created by the author. The name “Nibelungenlied” is also derived from handwriting C, which ends with the final line (stanza 2439.4): “Here has daz mære an end daz is d / er \ Nibelunge liet (Here the fairy has an end, that is der Nibelungen Lied) ” , while versions A and B close with the words “… der Nibelungen Not (nibelunge nôt) ” .
One theory - although largely rejected by research - attributes manuscript C to the Lorsch abbot Sigehart (abbot from 1167 to 1210). Sometimes it is also assumed that it is not a question of a monastery at all, but of a secular version, for example in a castle.
Descriptions of the "Siegfried Fountain" in the Nibelungenlied
The noticeable changes in version C include the inserted location information. In the chapters ( Aventiuren "Adventures") 15 to 17, the departure for the hunt (Av. 15), the hunt with race and murder of Siegfried at the Siegfriedbrunnen (Av. 16) and the transfer of the corpse back to Worms (Av. 17 ), these are contained several times. In Av. 16 the author of manuscript C added the following four-line stanza to the Nibelungenlied:
|
1013, 1 |
From the same fountain that Sivrit was defeated |
From the same well where Siegfried was slain |
With the location “Otenhaim”, located in front of the Odenwald , the author refers to a location that is obviously known to him and which he wants to convey to the public by adding to the earlier manuscripts. His reference to the fact that the fountain there "is still flowing" suggests that he could have meant a fountain that was still present and known to him when the manuscript C was produced.
The reference to the Odenwald is confirmed elsewhere. At the end of the 15th adventure, before the start of the fateful hunt, Gunter zu Hagen says in version C:
|
0919.1 |
Nv we d / er \ hereverte ledic sin |
Since we see ourselves so dispensed with the military expedition, |
Here, too, manuscript C contains a noticeable deviation from the other versions. Handwriting A reads as follows at this point:
|
Nv we d / er \ hereverte ledic sin |
"Since we see ourselves so dispensed with the military journey, |
Instead of a “hunt for bears and pigs” in version A, the author of version C speaks of a “hunting trip from Worms across the Rhine” and confirms once more that it was important to him, instead of anonymous locations, the action took place in real ones and well-known locations.
In older manuscripts there is no mention of the Odenwald in the same place, but of the “Wasgenwald” (“ ... I want to go hunting from Worms across the Rhine / and want to go to the Wasgenwald for amusement / to hunt with the dogs like I often do done "). This was mostly interpreted as a mistake by the author, who did not know the Rhine so well and confused the Odenwald with the Vosges or the Alsatian Wasgau. Later manuscripts would have corrected this error. According to another theory, however, a "wasiger forest" was meant, namely an alluvial forest-like forest interspersed with meadows ("Wasen" = moist meadows), as was typical in the past centuries for the Weschnitz area between the Rhine and the Odenwald.
The center of the Nibelung Empire was Worms. This city and the cathedral are mentioned again and again in the Nibelungenlied - in all manuscripts. The hunting party set out from Worms and crossed the Rhine in the process. The author moved the hunt and murder of Siegfried to the right of the Rhine.
The crossing of the Rhine is described in other places (“ some horse horses pulled loaded in front of you across the Rhine ” and “ they waited for the evening and drove across the Rhine ”).
The Odenwald lies on the right bank of the Rhine; likewise the Weschnitz. The location details of the song therefore match the geographic location.
Another striking feature of manuscript C is the reference to Lorsch Abbey , which is not mentioned in the other manuscripts. This could support the hypothesis that the Lorsch Abbot Sigehart was the author of this version. Lorsch Monastery was one of the most important monasteries in Germany in Carolingian times and a spiritual and cultural center of the Franconian Empire . It became the burial place of the German (East Franconian) kings Ludwig the German and Ludwig the Younger . As a royal monastery it was owned by the empire and ranked as a principality. Even if the monastery was already in decline when the manuscript C was created, its mention in the Nibelungenlied is a reflection of its former importance. The reference to Lorsch can be found in stanzas 1158 to 1165, which come to the end of Av. 19 and read as follows:
|
1158.1 |
ine riche fursten aptey pen vroe vote |
|
Another indication of the location, also contained in other versions, is "Spehtsharte" and has led to different interpretations. The cunning Hagen had the wine brought to the “Spehtsharte” for the feast after the hunt, so that the hunters had to quench their thirst with well water. This enabled Hagen to arrange the race to the well with Siegfried and to carry out the murder. The position reads in handwriting C:
|
0976.1 |
Thu speaking from Tronege vil dear / er \ herre min |
Then said von Tronje, “Dear gentlemen, |
The "Spehtsharte" in the interpretation as Spessart would be 100 km away from Worms, under the conditions at that time, far more than a day's journey for a packed horse. It seems unrealistic that the wine is said to have been sent “by mistake” to an area so far away from Worms.
An indication of the distance also results from the fact that Siegfried's body remained at the camp site until evening and was brought to Worms that night, where it had already arrived by the morning supper. So the camp site could only have been a few hours away from Worms. This could be combined with the message two lines later that the fountain is "in front of the mountains" if it is interpreted as "in front of the mountainous region", for example in the Rhine plain on the Bergstrasse, and not intramontaneously. The passage in handwriting C (the other manuscripts are similar) reads:
|
0978.1 |
Thu speak from / er \ Hagene ir noble knight balt |
But then Hagen said: “Your noble knights, quickly |
The alleged Siegfriedbrunnen and springs
Odenheim
Odenheim has been part of Östringen since 1974 . It is located in the Kraichgau ( Baden-Württemberg ) approx. 25 km south of Heidelberg and 30 km northeast of Karlsruhe . The Odenheimer Siegfriedbrunnen ⊙ , which was previously called Seesbrunnen, is located 1.5 kilometers north of the town center. The spring was captured in 1932 and provided with a plaque showing Hagen throwing the spear at Siegfried.
Odenheim justifies the claim to have the “real” Siegfriedbrunnen, with the fact that it is the only place known today to which the name “Otenhaim” in the Nibelungenlied could fit exactly. It can also point to the fact that the place was mentioned in a document as early as 769 and that there was a Benedictine abbey founded in 1122 in its vicinity . Since it is conceivable that manuscript C was written by a monk in a monastery, this could have happened in the Benedictine abbey near Odenheim and the author would have used the source known to him as a model.
However, two aspects speak against Odenheim: On the one hand, the community in Kraichgau is about 30 km from the southern edge of the Odenwald and can therefore not be described as “a village in front of the Odenwald”. On the other hand, the distance to Worms is around 80 km and is too great to transport Siegfried's body, which remained at the rest area until night, to Worms under the conditions at the time, where it arrived about five to six hours later for the morning meal.
Grasellenbach
The spring in Grasellenbach ⊙ is the best known of the various Siegfriedbrunnen and has been marketed intensively for tourism for a long time . It is located on a forest path about 1.5 km southeast of the town center. The water flows from a flat stone decorated with a heraldic lily . An inscription carved into a block of stone identifies the source as "Siegfried's fountain". In 1851 a Gothic stone cross was erected next to it, in the high base of which the stanza 981 from the 16th Aventiure of the Nibelungenlied in Middle High German is carved. In 1951, the well dried up after the old deciduous forest in the vicinity of the well was replaced by faster-growing coniferous wood for forestry reasons , thus changing the groundwater situation. In order to maintain the illusion of a spring, it has since been fed by a municipal water pipe.
The claim to be a Siegfried Fountain is based on the research of the Privy Councilor of State Johann Friedrich Knapp from Darmstadt in 1844. On the basis of the information in the Nibelungenlied, Knapp came across the source that had been known as the "Siegfried Fountain" since time immemorial. According to old stories, a powerful knight named Siegfried, who was also called the Horned, was killed here when he wanted to drink at the spring. Right next to it was an old atonement cross , as it was often erected in earlier times in memory of a murder. Knapp also noted that the source is near the 548 meter high Spessartskopf , which he interpreted as the "Spehtsharte" mentioned in the Nibelungenlied, into which Hagen had the wine brought. He equated the "Wasgenwald" with the current field name "Weschrein" or the approximately 3 km distant Weschnitz or the nearby village of the same name. For the location “Otenhaim” in the Nibelungenlied, he assumed an identity with the district of Dautenhan, Doteshan or Dotenhan mentioned in 1613 in a description of the Gras-Ellenbach district. With regard to the description “in front of” the mountains, Knapp referred to a passage in the Nibelungenlied in which Siegfried chases a bear trying to escape into a mountain gorge (“a gevelle”). In handwriting C this reads:
|
0956.1 |
The fallow was v / er \ lazen d / er \ über spranch from dan |
Then they loosened the bracken, the bear jumped along, |
and in handwriting A almost word for word:
|
He did not come into a gevelle dône ez; |
From this he concluded that the hunt took place in the mountains, thus not “in front of” but actually “in” the Odenwald. However, “gevelle” is translated quite loosely with “mountain gorge”; the literal translation is just "gradient".
The great distance to Worms speaks against Grasellenbach as a crime scene. Siegfried's body could not have been brought from Grasellenbach to Worms that night; A good day's march for a packed horse, especially under the more difficult conditions in the mountains, the slower pace at night and the still necessary crossing of the Rhine.
Second, the Grasellenbach “Siegfriedsquelle” is close to the “Spessartskopf”. The wine that Hagen had brought there would in this case have been about 400 meters from the source. Hagen would then hardly have announced that he had inadvertently "sent the wine to the Spehtsharte far away, which is why there is nothing to drink today". Instead of going to the spring, the hunters could have walked straight to the place where the wine was stored.
Hiltersklingen (Hüttental, Mossautal)
The well located between Hüttenthal and Hiltersklingen (now part of Mossautal ) on the B 460 is called “Lindelbrunnen” ⊙ . The collected water runs in a thin stream on a round stone setting between piled stone blocks. The source was mentioned in a description by Mark Heppenheim in AD 773, so it attracted special attention from people a long time ago. The fountain is about 5 km from the "Siegfriedsbrunnen" in Grasellenbach.
The same arguments can be made against the Lindelbrunnen by Hiltersklingen as against it (see above).
Lautertal Felsenmeer
In the sea of rocks above Lautertal-Reichenbach in the Odenwald there is also a Siegfriedsquelle ⊙ which is too far from Worms compared to the legendary story.
Lindenfels
Shortly after leaving Lindenfels , in the direction of Reichelsheim in the so-called “Devil's Hole”, there is also the Nibelungenbrunnen ⊙ , where Siegfried is said to have been murdered. This view was represented by the Odenwald expert and professor at the Latin School in Weinheim, Albert Ludwig Grimm, and the Mainz cathedral capitular Johann Konrad Dahl in the 19th century.
Heppenheim
The Siegfriedbrunnen in Heppenheim ⊙ was originally called "Lindenbrunnen" ("two-", "three-", "four linden trees"), since linden trees were characteristic of the square from the ages . Only in 1931 was it renamed "Siegfriedbrunnen" by a resolution of the city council after it had been discovered as a possible Siegfriedbrunnen in the 1920s through the research of the Darmstadt archive director Julius Reinhard Dieterich. The one-piece fountain edge of another fountain was then moved here and fitted with a wrought-iron grille in 1955. Originally it was a reed spring that was fed by the streams coming from the Odenwald and seeping away from the mountains. By regulating the brooks, water was withdrawn from the well, so that it initially became a scoop well and since the drainage of the Heppenheim western boundary after the Second World War and the associated lowering of the groundwater by two meters, it no longer has any water. The commercial and industrial area has meanwhile reached the fountain, which was originally located far in front of the city: The square is now between high-rise buildings, the Langnese-Iglo GmbH factory and a large shopping market. A metal plaque on a boulder and another plaque on a wooden wall provide more detailed explanations of the Nibelungen saga and the place of Siegfried's murder.
Compared to other "Siegfriedbrunnen", the Heppenheimer has a good chain of clues: the distance relationships with the storyline are consistent. The source is “in front of” and not “in” the Odenwald (“in front of the Otenwalde a village lit Otenhaim ”). Dieterich interpreted the “Wasgenwald” in the older manuscripts as the “Wasenwald” of the Weschnitz (see above). "Wasgen" - or "Wasenwald" was the name given to the swamps and meadows of the Weschnitz lowlands between Lorsch and Heppenheim. Similar field names still exist today. In the "Spehtsharte", Dieterich suspected the "Spissert", a wooded area in the Viernheim district , near Hüttenfeld , about 7 km from the Siegfriedbrunnen in Heppenheim , which is still known today .
As a source model for the author of the C manuscript, the proximity to the former Lorsch monastery, only a few kilometers away, speaks . It is reasonable to assume that the editor knew the once important Lorsch Monastery and the characteristic fountain nearby (the Lorsch Abbot Sigehart is considered a possible author; see above). In this context Dieterich was able to give an explanation for the place name “Otenheim”. In addition to the main monastery, the Altenmünster branch and the “Hagen se Lorse” monastery a few kilometers south of the main monastery, which was founded in 1130 on the land of Uta von Calw from the house of the Schauenburger, belonged to the Lorsch monastery. In the same place there was also “Utes Sedelhof” (manorial own farm), which was named after her “Uotenheim”, “Utenheim” and later “Ottenheim”, as well as a village of the same name that perished in the Middle Ages. It was roughly in the area of today's Lorsch district of Seehof, approx. 3 km from the Heppenheimer "Siegfriedbrunnen". Dieterich assumed that this place entered the manuscript C as "Otenhaim". His thesis is supported by the insertions about the Lorsch Monastery in handwriting C (see above). These deal specifically with Uta von Calw and the (secondary) monastery “Hagen se Lorse” and also mention her Sedelhof (“A rich princely monastery was donated by Frau Ute / after the death of the Dankrat from her widow's estate; ...; There stood for woman Ute a Sedelhof ready / to Lorsch near the monastery, rich, large and wide ”).
Edigheim
In his prose adaptation of the Nibelungenlied, the author Jürgen Lodemann suspects the Ludwigshafen district of Edigheim , about 11 km from Worms, to be the scene of the crime. Edigheim is the current spelling of Otenhaim, which is named in the Donaueschingen monastery manuscript C as the place of murder. The German scholars Gustav Ehrismann and Friedrich v. Hagen would have supported Edigheim. The proximity to Worms speaks for Edigheim, and in the 19th century it was the hunting ground of the Worms prince-bishops. The old forest spring, the v. Hagen called "Siegfriedbrunnen" and which is now in the immediate vicinity of the A6 motorway, still exists according to Lodemann and is only overbuilt by a large BASF sewage treatment plant ⊙ .
Amorbach
In Amorbach in the Odenwald is the designated as a natural monument Zittenfeldener source , ⊙ another Siegfriedbrunnen.
literature
- Helmut Berndt: The Nibelungs - On the trail of a legendary people. 1992. ISBN 3-404-64109-4
- Julius Reinhard Dieterich: Where Sifrit was slain. Starkenburg 1926, No. 1
- Nibelungen manuscript C - Donaueschingen 63. ( digitized version of the Badische Landesbibliothek )
Individual evidence
- ^ Heusler, Andreas: Nibelungen saga and Nibelungenlied. Dortmund 1965, p. 152.
- ^ Weber, Gottfried, in connection with Werner Hoffmann: Nibelungenlied. Stuttgart 1964, p. 62.
- ↑ Stroheker, K. F: Studies on the historical-geographical basis of the Nibelung poetry. In: German quarterly journal for literary studies and intellectual history (DVjs). 32, 1958, pp. 216-240.
- ↑ s. Weber, 1964, pp. 27ff.
- ↑ s. Weber 1964, p. 65ff.
- ↑ s. Weber 1964, p. 52.
- ↑ s. Weber 1964, p. 44ff.
- ↑ s. Weber 1964, p. 50ff.
- ↑ Krogmann, Willy: On the text criticism of the Nibelungenlied. In: Journal for German Antiquity and German Literature (ZfdA) 87, 1956/57, pp. 275–294.
- ^ Batts, Michael S: Poetic Form as a Criterion in Manuscript criticism. The Modern Language Review (MLR) 55, 1960, pp. 543-552.
- ↑ Brackert, Helmut: Contributions to the manuscript criticism of the Nibelungenlied. 1963.
- ↑ s. Weber 1964, p. 50.
- ↑ s. Weber 1964, p. 51.
- ↑ Dieterich, Julius R .: The poet of the Nibelungenlied. An attempt in 1923.
- ↑ Kralik, Dietrich: Who was the poet of the Nibelungenlied? 1954.
- ^ Dürrenmatt, Nelly: The Nibelungenlied in the circle of courtly poetry. Bern 1945.
- ↑ s. Dieterich, 1923.
- ↑ measuring table sheet 6818 Odenheim from 1876 in the Deutsche Fotothek
- ^ Nibelungenbrunnen , accessed on July 15, 2014.
- ↑ s. Dieterich, 1923.
- ↑ see Dieterich, 1923, p. 55.
- ^ Jürgen Lodemann: Siegfried and Krimhild. The Nibelungen. Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-423-13359-7 .
- ↑ Information board at the source in Zittenfelden
Map with all coordinates: