Venusberg (legend)
The Venusberg is a legendary motif that has been known since the Middle Ages. It mainly appears in connection with the minstrel Tannhäuser and, in addition to folk texts, has undergone numerous artistic adaptations. Ms. Venus , who holds luxurious court with nymphs and mermaids inside the mountain named after her, attracts people with her beauty who lead a sinful life devoted to eros and thus fall victim to damnation . Similar announcements substances found in various cultures, such as in the Odyssey , where Kirke and Kalypso the Odysseus seduce and retain several years with him.
Origin and Distribution
The Venusberg appears as early as 1437/38 in the Formicarius of Johannes Nider or in 1614 in Heinrich Kornmann's Mons Veneris . The motif is treated intensively together with the Tannhauser saga during the Romantic period . It can be found in Ludwig Tieck (story Der getreue Eckart and der Tannhäuser , 1799), Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano ( Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection , 1806), the Brothers Grimm ( Deutsche Sagen collection , 1816), Joseph von Eichendorff (story Das Marble picture , 1819), Ludwig Bechstein (collection Die Sagen von Eisenach and the Wartburg, Hörselberg and Reinhardsbrunn , 1835), Heinrich Heine (essay Elementargeister , 1837), Ludwig Uhland (collection folk songs , 1844). The best known is the implementation in Richard Wagner's opera Tannhäuser and the singer's war on Wartburg of 1845. Hannes Anderer contemporary describes the place of a sexual initiation in a luxurious ambience as Venusberg, in his novel Encounter with Melusine .
The traditional folk ballad of the Tannhauser (with "au" to differentiate it from the minnesinger with "äu"), with evidence from around 1500, revises the Venusberg saga in its own original way and connects it with a pre-Reformation criticism of the Pope , the penitent sinner the absolution denied and condemned it.
The presence of an ancient deity far from its area of origin Italy or Greece explains the legend or popular tradition with the fact that this is a refuge for the deity who fled from Christianity. The Brothers Grimm pointed to a connection to the Germanic death goddess Holda , whose name sometimes appears in the legend instead of that of Venus. Venus derives another attempt at explanation from its Germanic counterpart, the goddess of love Freya . The transformation of the name of the gods and a pagan myth into an antique Christian story has arisen since the high Middle Ages under the influence of courtly-bourgeois poetry.
Location of various Venus Mountains
The Hörselberge near Eisenach or other mountains north of the Alps are often identified as Venusberg . The northernmost Venusberg is the Finisberg near Flensburg 's Volkspark . Venusberg is also called a plateau in Bonn on which the district of the same name is located.
