History Literature / Nibelungenlied

Technically, the poem is written in four line roughly hexameter stanzas, with strong pauses in the middle of each line, rhyming AABB, and with the final line of each stanza usually lengthened by an extra foot. The language of the poem is Middle High German, ''i.e''., the language spoken in what is now southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, from about the 11th to the 14th centuries. Modern Germans will be able to guess roughly what a sentence is about but without training they won't be able to make out details let alone pronounce it correctly. Much like modern English-speakers with Chaucer. Thus:

* AnyoneCanDie: Just three men (Etzel, Dietrich von Bern, Hildebrand) short of KillEmAll.

** Kriemhild summons the Burgundians to a feast to serve them a round of KillEmAll.

The epic has had a number of film adaptations, perhaps most notably Creator/FritzLang's two part, four and a half hour epic, ''Film/DieNibelungen'' (1924), starring Paul Richter as Siegfried and Margarete Schön as Kriemhild, which was highly faithful to the original epic and deliberately avoided Wagner's famous version. There's also the surprisingly popular if slightly cheesy 1966 remake directed by Harald Reinl and starring Olympic hammer-thrower Uwe Beyer as Siegfried; and the 2004 TV film ''Curse of the Ring'' ([-AKA-] ''[[NamesTheSame Ring of the Nibelungs]]''; ''Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King''; ''The Nibelungs -- The Curse of the Dragon''; and ''The Sword of Xanten''), directed by Uli Edel and starring Benno Fürmann as Siegfried.

The ''Nibelungenlied'', translated literally as "The Song of the Nibelungs", is an epic poem in two parts, telling the story of Siegfried, his murder by the Burgundians, and the revenge taken by his widow Kriemhild. Dating back to the early 13th century, its authorship is unknown, but it is thought to have been written by an Austrian author from between Passau and Vienna for recitation in the Austrian court. The ''Nibelungenlied'' is the earliest complete telling of the legend, though other versions of the story exist, including the Myth/{{Norse|Mythology}} ''Literature/VolsungaSaga'' and passages in the ''Literature/{{Edda}}s'', which, though written down later, are thought to preserve earlier elements of the story that had become obscured in the [[TheHighMiddleAges mediævalized]] German poem. Brief allusions to the Siegfried story also exist in much earlier works, such as ''Literature/{{Waltharius}}'' and ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}''.

* VengefulWidow: Kriemhild may be the ultimate example.

* DeathByAdaptation: Kriemhild's Norse counterpart Gudrun from the ''Literature/VolsungaSaga'' survived the ordeal to get {{br|eakTheCutie}}oken [[UpToEleven even more]], thus resulting in two more {{r|oaringRampageOfRevenge}}ampages before she finally {{d|eathByDespair}}ies.

* DoubleStandard: Hildebrand kills Kriemhild because she killed Hagen, and neither Dietrich nor Etzel (Kriemhild's husband!) object or rebuke Hildebrand. No one cares about all the people Hagen killed, even though most of ''them'' were innocent. And while it's not okay for a woman to kill a man even if he deserved it, it is obviously okay for a man to kill a woman. In fact, Kriemhild's sudden death by Hildebrand is so ill-motivated that it can be regarded as a last-minute [[AssPull contrivance]] just to [[DroppedABridgeOnHim kill her off.]] The need to kill her off probably arose from the expectations of the audiences, who by the end of the poem would have seen her as a pure villainess who could not go unpunished.

* SociopathicHero: Hagen. ''In spades''.
* SociopathicSoldier: Also Hagen

[[quoteright:212:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Nibelungenlied_8760.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:212:Hagen spears Siegfried in the Back during a Hunt -- A [[TheLateMiddleAges 15th Century]] Manuscript of the ''Nibelungenlied'']]

The epic has had a number of film adaptations, perhaps most notably Creator/FritzLang's two part, four and a half hour epic, ''Die Nibelungen: Siegfried'' and ''Die Nibelungen: Kriemhilds Rache'' (1924), starring Paul Richter as Siegfried and Margarete Schön as Kriemhild, which was highly faithful to the original epic and deliberately avoided Wagner's famous version. There's also the suprisingly popular if slightly cheesy 1966 remake directed by Harald Reinl and starring Olympic hammer-thrower Uwe Beyer as Siegfried; and the 2004 TV film ''Curse of the Ring'' ([-AKA-] ''[[NamesTheSame Ring of the Nibelungs]]''; ''Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King''; ''The Nibelungs -- The Curse of the Dragon''; and ''The Sword of Xanten''), directed by Uli Edel and starring Benno Fürmann as Siegfried.

* DecoyProtagonist: Siegfried, wo gets killed halfway the work.

** Brunhild is last mentionned when Gunther leaves Worm to go to Etzel. In the Norse version, she commits suicide, but the German poet knew that would have been too shocking for his audience.

The first section details the life, exploits, and death of the hero Siegfried (MHG “Sîfrit”), son of King Siegmund and Queen Sieglinde of Xanten, who achieves near invincibility by bathing in the blood of a freshly slain dragon, but retains a point of weakness in a place which the blood fails to cover, in this case the shoulder, part of which remains covered by a linden leaf during his gory baptism.

* EyepatchOfPower: Hagen is one-eyed since his youth when he fought with the hero Walter of Aquitaine, an event related in the heroic epic ''Waltharius''.

The ''Nibelungenlied'', translated literally as "The Song of the Nibelungs", is an epic poem in two parts, telling the story of Siegfried, his murder by the Burgundians, and the revenge taken by his widow Kriemhild. Dating back to the early 13th century, its authorship is unknown, but it is thought to have been written by an Austrian author from between Passau and Vienna for recitation in the Austrian court. The ''Nibelungenlied'' is the earliest complete telling of the legend, though other versions of the story exist, including the Myth/{{Norse|Mythology}} ''Literature/VolsungaSaga'' and passages in the ''Literature/{{Edda}}s'', which, though written down later, are thought to preserve earlier elements of the story that had become obscured in the [[TheHighMiddleAges mediævalized]] German poem. Brief allusions to the Siegfried story also exist in much earlier works, such as ''Waltharius'' and ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}''.

** The theory that Siegfried and Brünhilde are based on the Merovingian Frankish king Sigebert I (died 575 ''[-A.D.-]'') and his queen, the Visigoth princess Brunichild (died 613 ''[-A.D.-]'') has now fallen out of favour, though. Another minority theory is that Siegfried is based on Arminius of the Cheruscii (also known as Herman the German), that the fight against the dragon started out as a metaphor for the defeat of the Roman army in the battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 ''[-A.D.-]''), and that "Siegfried" was actually the Germanic name of the man the Romans called Arminius.

** The theory that Siegfried and Brünhilde are based on the Merovingian Frankish king Sigebert I (died 575 ''[-A.D.-]'') and his queen, the Visigoth princess Brunichild (died 613 ''[-A.D.-]) has now fallen out of favour, though. Another minority theory is that Siegfried is based on Arminius of the Cheruscii (also known as Herman the German), that the fight against the dragon started out as a metaphor for the defeat of the Roman army in the battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 ''[-A.D.-]''), and that "Siegfried" was actually the Germanic name of the man the Romans called Arminius.

** Brunhild is last mentionned when Gunther leave Worm to go to Etzel. In the Norse version, she commits suicide, but the German poet knew that would have been too shocking for his audience.

The ''Nibelungenlied'', translated literally as "The Song of the Nibelungs", is an epic poem in two parts, telling the story of Siegfried, his murder by the Burgundians, and the revenge taken by his widow Kriemhild. Dating back to the early 13th century, its authorship is unknown, but it is thought to have been written by an Austrian author from between Passau and Vienna for recitation in the Austrian court. The ''Nibelungenlied'' is the earliest complete telling of the legend, though versions of the story exist, including the Myth/{{Norse|Mythology}} ''Literature/VolsungaSaga'' and passages in the ''Literature/{{Edda}}s'', which, though written down later, are thought to preserve earlier elements of the story that had become obscured in the [[TheHighMiddleAges mediævalized]] German poem. Brief allusions to the Siegfried story also exist in much earlier works, such as ''Waltharius'' and ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}''.

* CanonWelding: As the original versions of the stories have been lost and had to be speculatively reconstructed by scholars from the evidence of the various German and Scandinavian versions, it is hard to tell, but it is quite clear that the ''Nibelungenlied'' is an amalgam of some quite different stories, and it is a matter of conjecture to decide when the welding of the elements occurred and which ones are to be attributed to the author of the Nibelungenlied. The story of the dragonslayer called Siegfried or Sigurd accounts for the first half of the main plot and the originally unrelated story of the death of the Burgundian kings at the hands of the Huns and their king Atli (Attila) for the second. The welding necessitated some changes, thus in the Scandinavian epics that contain just the Atli saga, the sister of Gunther, who is married to Atli, kills her husband to avenge her brothers. In the Nibelungenlied, Kriemhild kills her brother using the army of her second husband Etzel (Attila) to avenge the murder of her first husband Siegfried.
** A canon welding that does seem to be the idea of the writer of the Nibelungenlied is the inclusion of Dietrich and his knights in the finale, which fuses the Nibelungen story to the cycle of epics about Dietrich of Bern (Theoderic the Great). In that cycle Attila was presented essentially as a sympathetic character and generous host, not the kind of treacherous and cold-blooded killer as in the Atli sagas.

* CanonWelding: As the original versions of the stories have been lost and had to be speculatively reconstructed by scholars from the evidence of the various German and Scandinavian versions it is hard to tell, but it is quite clear that the Nibelungenlied is an amalgam of some quite different stories, and it is a matter of conjecture to decide when the welding of the elements occurred and which ones are to be attributed to the author of the Nibelungenlied. The story of the dragonslayer called Siegfried or Sigurd accounts for the first half of the main plot and the originally unrelated story of the death of the Burgundian kings at the hands of the Huns and their king Atli (Attila) for the second. The welding necessitated some changes, thus in the Scandinavian epics that contain just the Atli saga, the sister of Gunther, who is married to Atli, kills her husband to avenge her brothers. In the Nibelungenlied, Kriemhild kills her brother using the army of her second husband Etzel (Attila) to avenge the murder of her first husband Siegfried.

The political relationship of the two men, though fortified by Siegfried's services and his marriage to Kriemhild, is soured when an argument between Brunhild and Kriemhild reveals the truth about the secret arrangement and the security of the state is threatened. Gunther's solution to this comes about through his scheming vassal Hagen who, with Gunther, plots the assassination of the hero.

The ''Nibelungenlied'' is one of the sources for Creator/RichardWagner's ''[[Theatre/TheRingOfTheNibelung Der Ring des Nibelungen]]'', though Wagner's work draws much more from [[Literature/TheSagaOfTheVolsungs Scandinavian sources]]; for instance, Wagner practically abandons the entire second half of the poem, and substantially ignores Kriemhild.

* BoundAndGagged: Gunther's initial, failed, sexual advances on the night of his marriage to Brunhild end with him being overpowered, bound and suspended from a nail in the ceiling (famously depicted in Henry Fuseli's drawing of the scene). Subsequent critics have done little to downplay the various erotic implications of this scene, making it possible FetishFuel.

Technically, the poem is written in four line roughly hexameter stanzas, with strong pauses in the middle of each line, rhyming AABB, and with the final line of each stanza usually lengthened by an extra foot. The language of the poem is Middle High German, ''i.e''., the language spoken in what is now southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, from about the 11th to the 14th centuries. Thus:

The '''''Nibelungenlied''''', translated literally as "The Song of the Nibelungs", is an epic poem in two parts, telling the story of Siegfried, his murder by the Burgundians, and the revenge taken by his widow Kriemhild. Dating back to the early 13th century, its authorship is unknown, but it is thought to have been written by an Austrian author from between Passau and Vienna for recitation in the Austrian court. The ''Nibelungenlied'' is the earliest complete telling of the legend, though versions of the story exist, including the Myth/{{Norse|Mythology}} ''Literature/VolsungaSaga'' and passages in the ''Literature/{{Edda}}s'', which, though written down later, are thought to preserve earlier elements of the story that had become obscured in the [[TheHighMiddleAges mediævalized]] German poem. Brief allusions to the Siegfried story also exist in much earlier works, such as ''Waltharius'' and ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}''.

Judging by the number of manuscripts, the poem was hugely popular in [[HolyRomanEmpire mediæval Germany]]. After TheRenaissance, however, it lost favour and sank from view -- to the point that, when the poem was rediscovered and published in a critical edition by Christoph Heinrich Müller, UsefulNotes/FrederickTheGreat, to whom Müller had dedicated it, famously remarked that the poem was "not worth a shot of powder" and that he wouldn't have such trash in his library. Nevertheless, the poem regained its stature in the Romantic era, and it is still regarded by many as Germany's national epic.