DIE NIBELUNGEN

die Nibelungen: translation

(The Nibelungs) by Friedrich Hebbel.

   Premiered 1861. Based on the medieval saga, written in Middle High German in Austria sometime around the early 13th century. Hebbel turned what he considered a "national epic" into a stageworthy trilogy by concentrating on the blood lust and seething hatred between two women, Brunhild and Kriemhild. Against them, even the superhuman strength and courage of Siegfried cannot prevail. The play consists of a prologue followed by two five-act tragedies: Siegfrieds Tod (Siegfried's Death) and Kriemhilds Rache (Kriemhild's Revenge). Hebbel carefully charted the growing animosity between Brunhild and Kriemhild beginning with Siegfried's assistance to Günther, king of the Burgundians, in the latter's conquest of Brunhild on her wedding night. Kriemhild subsequently humiliates Brunhild by publicly disclosing the tactics Siegfried used. When Günther's courtier Hagen kills Siegfried using likewise unfair tactics during a bear hunt, Kriemhild swears revenge against Hagen and all the Burgundians by marrying Etzel, king of the Huns, and fomenting war against the Bur-gundians. The trilogy is a magnificent blank-verse treatment (it took Hebbel seven years to complete it) of tribal enmity that is ultimately resolved not through incarnadine violence but through acceptance of mercy "in the name of Him who was crucified!" The play is markedly different from the Nibelungen saga Richard Wagner employed when composing his Ring Cycle of operas.