Der Aufsatz vergleicht die Motivik und Liebeskonzeptionen der deutschsprachigen Enyador-Saga Mira Valentins mit Gottfrieds von Straßburg Tristan und untersucht, wie der moderne Roman mittelalterliche Erzählstrukturen mit zeitgenössischen gesellschaftlichen Vorstellungen verbindet. Im Zentrum steht das Verhältnis einer mittelalterlichen Minnekonzeption zu den Liebeskonzepten des modernen Fantasy-Romans. Ohne von einem direkten Rezeptionsverhältnis auszugehen, wird analysiert, inwiefern Topik und Erzählkerne des mittelalterlichen Textes aufgegriffen und zugleich deutlich veränderte Liebeskonzepte entworfen werden. Während bei Gottfried die Liebe als ambivalente, aber höchste Wertinstanz erscheint, wird in dem Fantasy-Roman ein modernes, bürgerlich geprägtes Modell propagiert. Damit sind zugleich Fragen nach Geschlechterrollen, sozialen Hierarchien und der kulturellen Vermittlung von Werten verbunden. Die Rezeption des Tristan-Stoffs erweist sich somit nicht nur als literaturhistorisch relevant, sondern auch als Spiegel aktueller gesellschaftlicher Diskurse.
At the climax of the first story in Hans Scholz’s bestselling 1955 novel Am grünen Strand der Spree, Wehrmacht soldier Jürgen Wilms witnesses the mass murder of hundreds of Jews by a Sonderkommando. As he watches the men, women, and children walk silently to the mass grave where they are gunned down, his mind whirrs with shame at his past and current failure to act. Interlaced among these stream-of-consciousness thoughts is a reference to a well-known medieval poem by Walther von der Vogelweide, Under der linden. In the song, a female narrator coyly describes an illicit tryst. She, and the evidence that she points to, are vestiges of a former presence, faint life marks (Savoy, 2021), veiled by layers of space, time, and performance dynamic. The female narrator is thus shielded from scrutiny by rhetoric that focuses attention on the performer. This web of revelation and concealment offers an intriguing framework for understanding the discursive effects of Scholz’s narrative, which is conveyed predominantly through the diary entries of Jürgen Wilms and, like Walther’s song, relies on surrogacy and performance frames. We “hear” Wilms’s voice only through his diary entries as they are read aloud to a group of friends by another POW to whom Wilms entrusted his writings. Like Walther’s female narrator, Wilms is a trace of a former presence. Scholz’s technique allows the author to address Germany’s murderous past, while discursively walling off ‘everyday’ Germans such as Wilms from all but the most remote complicity in the Nazis’ crimes.
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 Germanspeaking 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 affairwith a mighty outsider who suddenly appears and tries skillfully to get accepted and integrated without great difficulties.
This study compares the motifs and concepts of love in Mira Valentin's Enyador saga with those of Tristan by Gottfried von Stra ss burg and examines how the modern novel combines medieval narrative structures with contemporary social concepts. It becomes apparent that the Tristan material functions as an open template that is continually reinterpreted. Central to the analysis is the comparison between the medieval concept of Minne and modern models of partnership in the fantasy novel. Without presupposing a direct relationship of reception, the study investigates to what extent key motifs and narrative cores of the medieval text are taken up while, at the same time, significantly transformed concepts of love are developed. Whereas in Gottfried's work love appears as an ambivalent yet supreme value, the fantasy novel propagates a modern, bourgeois model shaped by the nineteenth century. This also raises questions concerning gender roles, social hierarchies, and the cultural mediation of values. The reception of the Tristan material thus proves to be not only of literary-historical relevance but also a reflection of contemporary social discourses.
This study analyzes the instrumentalization of the Nibelungenlied in a right-wing extremist context, exemplified by the Compact magazine. German-speaking right-wing extremism, which often refers to the ideological foundations of National Socialism, avoids direct references to the Third Reich, not least because of the consequences under criminal law. Instead, parts of history, such as early Germanic times or the Nibelungenlied, are selectively interpreted for their own ideology. Compact magazine, an influential media outlet in the right-wing scene, serves as a case study. The magazine's Internet pages, on which further references to the Nibelungenlied can be found, are also taken into account (https://www.compact-online.de). The analysis shows that although the epic is not explicitly interpreted in a right-wing extremist manner in the magazine itself, it serves as a hook for nationalist interpretations of history and for articulating right-wing extremist positions in the reader comments. References to National Socialism are also made and biologistic terminology is used that echoes National Socialist concepts. A look at other right-wing extremist interpretations of the Nibelungenlied puts the adaptation in Compact magazine into context. It shows that elsewhere in right-wing extremism, the reception of the epic is similarly superficial and selective, focused solely on v & ouml;lkisch-social Darwinist ideology. In summary, it can be said thatthe Nibelungenlied is perceived less as a literary work than as a means of constructing a national identity and agitating against contemporary society.
