The Nibelungen Lied, or Song of the Nibelungen, was written about the
beginning of the thirteenth century, though the events it chronicles
belong to the sixth or seventh century. The manuscript poem was discovered
about the middle of the eighteenth century.
Lachmann asserts that the Nibelungen Lied consists of twenty songs of
various dates and authorship; other scholars, while agreeing that it is
the work of a single author, ascribe it variously to Conrad von
Kurenburger, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and Walther
von der Vogelweide.
Whoever was its author, he was only a compiler of legends that were the
property of the people for centuries, and are found in many other of the
popular German epics of the Middle Ages.
The poem consists of thirty-nine adventures, containing two thousand four
hundred and fifty-nine stanzas of four lines each. The action covers
thirty years. It is based on material obtained from four sources: (1) The
Frankish saga-cycle, whose hero is Siegfried; (2) the saga-cycle of
Burgundy, whose heroes are Günther, king of Worms, and his two brothers;
(3) the Ostrogothic saga-cycle, whose hero is Dietrich of Bern; and (4)
the saga-cycle of Etzel, king of the Huns, with his allies and vassals.
Dietrich of Bern is supposed to be Theodoric of Italy, in exile at the
Hunnish court. Etzel is Attila the Hun, and Günther, Gunducarius, king of
the Burgundians, who was destroyed by the Huns with his followers in the
year 436.
The Nibelungen Lied very much resembles the Iliad, not only in the
uncertainty of its origin and the impersonality of its author, but also in
its objectivity, its realism, the primitive passions of its heroes, and
the wondrous acts of valor performed by them. It contains many passages of
wonderful beauty, and gives a striking picture of the social customs and
the religious belief of the time.