Already the nineteenth century was ablaze with great enthusiasm for the Middle Ages. The Middle High German epic Nibelungenlied, above all, was a true magnet for those interested in historicizing their present world and to retrieve the glory of the past. This paper offers a new close reading of Friedrich Hebbel’s Die Nibelungen (1862) which was a great success on the theater stages in German-speaking lands and soon also found translators in various languages. Hebbel pursued a different approach to this medieval epic than his famous contemporary, Richard Wagner, who tended to mythologize his medieval material. The close analysis reveals that the differences to Wagner were actually not that vast as commonly assumed since Hebbel also enjoyed mythologizing some aspects of the Nibelungenlied and its Nordic parallels. Here the intention is to uncover specific narrative and psychologizing strategies that made this play so popular. The interpretation is limited to a study of the early episodes where we can easily recognize the major differences between the medieval source and the nineteenth-century adaptation. Most importantly, Hebbel humanized and personalized his figures and allowed us to gain insight into their mindset and emotions. Although medieval heroes appear on the stage, the play makes them rather into regular individuals with all their character strengths and weaknesses. Hebbel transformed his source, at least in the first part, into a family affair with a mighty outsider who suddenly appears and tries skillfully to get accepted and integrated without great difficulties.
Albrecht Classen (Thu,) studied this question.