The Wibelungen

by Richard Wagner

  So let us embrace that conviction: and we cannot do so with a stronger confidence than it inspired in the popular mind of the Middle Ages coeval with that race's deeds; a confidence that survived to the poetic literature of the Hohenstaufen period, where we may plainly distinguish in the Christian-chivalrous poems the Welfian element become at last a churchly one, in the newly-furbished Nibelungenlieder that utterly contrasting Wibelingian principle with its often still ur-pagan cut.

  The Welfen.

  Before proceeding to a minuter examination of the point last touched, it is requisite to define more closely the direct opponents of the Wibelingen, the party of the Welfen. In the German language "Welfe" means sucklings, at first of dogs, and then of quadrupeds in general. The notion of pure descent and nurture at the mother's breast was easily conjoined to this, and in the poetic people's-mouth a "whelp" would soon be tantamount to a pure-bred son, born and suckled by the lawful mother.

  In the times of the Karlingen, at its ancient Swabian stem-seat there enters history a race in which the name of Welf is handed down to farthest generations. It is a Welf who first arrests the eye of History by declining to accept enfeoffments from Frankish kings; as he could not stop his sons from entering relations partly connubial and partly feudal with the Karlings, the old father left his lands in deep disgust and withdrew into the wilderness, to be no witness of his race's shame.

  If the dry chronicles of that time thought good to record this trait, to them so unimportant, we certainly may assume that it was far more actively embraced and spread abroad by the people of the downtrod German stem; for this incident, whose like may have often occurred before, expressed with energy the proud yet suffering self-consciousness of all the German stems as against the ruling tribe. Welf may thus have been acclaimed a "true whelp," a genuine son of the genuine stem-mother; and, with the constantly increasing wealth and honour of his race, it might easily end in the people's viewing the name Welf as synonymous with German tribal independence against the feared but ne'er-beloved Frankish sovereignty.

  In Swabia, their ancestral seat, the Welfs at last beheld in the advancement of the petty Hohenstaufen through intermarriage with the Frankish Kaisers and arrival at the dignity of Swabian, and thereafter Frankish Dukes, a fresh shame put upon them; and King Lothar used their natural embitterment against this race as chief means of resistance to the Wibelungen, who openly impugned his royal right. He increased the power of the Welfs to a degree unknown before by granting them the two dukedoms of Saxony and Bavaria at the same date, and only through the great assistance thus obtained was it possible for him to assert his kingship against the clamour of the Wibelungen, ay, so to humble them that they themselves held it not unadvisable to found a future stronghold among the German stems by intermarriage with the Welfs. Repeatedly did the possession of the major part of Germany devolve on the Welfen, and though his Wibeling predecessors had deemed expedient to withdraw it from them, Friedrich I. appears to have seen in the recognition of such an estate itself the surest means of reconcilement with an invincible National party and lastingly laying the hatred of ages; in a sense, he pacified them by material possession, the less disturbedly to realise his own ideal of the Kaiserdom, which he had grasped as none before.

  What part is to be ascribed to the Welfs in the final foundering of the Wibelingen, and with them of the stricter German monarchy, is plainly told in history: the latter half of the thirteenth century shews us the fulfilled reaction of the narrower national spirit of the German stems, in their thirst for independence, against the royal yoke originally imposed upon all by the Franks. That these stems themselves were almost entirely disbanded till then, is to be explained, among other things, by their having lost their royal families as result of their first subjection to the Franks; their other noble houses, the nearest of kin to the former, could therefore more easily make themselves absolute (directly holding from the Reich,-reichsunmittelbar) under the shelter and pretext of inherited imperial fiefs, and thus induce the thorough disgregation of the stems in whose broader national-interest the fight against the supremacy of the Wibelungen had first been waged. The ultimately successful reaction was therefore founded less upon an actual triumph of the stems, than on the collapse of the central kingly power undermined from of old by that fight. That it did not take place in the sense of the Folk, but in the interest of lords who were splitting up the folk-sterns, is thus the ugly feature in this historical occurrence, however much that issue lay appointed by the nature of the existing historic elements themselves. Yet we may call everything related hereto the "Welfic" principle (devoid of any stem-saga), in opposition to that of the Wibelungen, which developed into nothing less than a claim to world-dominion.

  The Nibelungen-hoard in the Frankish Royal race.

  Clearly to grasp the inner relation of the Nibelungen-saga to the historical significance of the Frankish Kingship, let us once more turn back, and at somewhat greater length, to a consideration of the historic doings of this ancient princely race.

  In what state of inner dissolution of their tribal system the Frankish stems at last arrived at their historic seat, the present Netherlands, cannot be strictly ascertained. We at first distinguish Salic and Ripuarian Franks; and not merely this distinction, but also the fact that larger districts (Gaue) had their independent Princes, makes it obvious that the original Stem-kingship had suffered a strongly democratic devolution through the rovings and most varied partings, as also the later re-uniting of branch-races. One thing is certain, that only from the members of the whole stem's oldest race were Kings or Commanders chosen: their power over the single components was evidently hereditary, for, though a chief of all the assembled stems was chosen for great enterprises in common, it could only be, as said, from out the branches of the ur-old race of Kings.

  In "Nibelgau" we see established the undoubtedly oldest and most genuine section of the race: Chlojo, or Chlodio, may be regarded as the earliest historic holder of the strictly Royal authority, i.e. the Hoard of the Nibelungen. Victoriously had the Franks invaded the Roman world already, dwelt under the name of Confederates in the former Roman Belgia, and Chlojo ruled a subject province with something like a proconsul's power. Very probably a decisive battle with Roman legions had preceded this final seizure, and in the spoil there may have been found, beyond the war-chest, the full insignia of Roman empire. In these treasures, these insignia, the stem-saga of the Nibelungen-hoard would reap new realistic matter for its freshening, and renew alike its ideal import by the increase to the royal stability of the old stem-ruling race. The previously divided royal authority thus won a sure combining-point, material and ideal at once, against which the licence of the degenerate tribal system broke in vain. To the many collateral branches of the royal house the advantage of this newly-risen power would be equally obvious, and they persistently strove to wrest it to themselves. Such an immediate kinsman was Merwig, chieftain of the Merwegau, to whose protection the dying Chlojo gave his three infant sons; instead of parcelling out their birthright to his charges, the faithless cousin seized it for himself and drove the helpless children out: this trait we meet in the full-fledged Nibelungen-saga, where Siegfried von Morungen, i.e. Merwungen has to divide the heirloom Hoard among the sons of Nibelung, but likewise keeps it for himself. The power and right residing in the Hoard had thus passed over to the Nibelungen's blood-relations, the Merwingen: in effect, they stretched its physical significance to ever fuller width by constant conquest and addition to the royal might, and the latter more especially by a systematic rooting-out of all the blood-relations of their house.

  One of the sons of Chlojo was saved, however; his descendants fled to Austrasia, regained the Nibelgau, established themselves at Nivella, and finally re-appeared in history as the "Pipingen," a name unquestionably given them by the hearty sympathy of the Folk with the fate of those little sons of Chlojo, and hereditarily accepted in due gratitude for this people's helping and protecting love. For these it was reserved,
after recovery of the Nibelungen-hoard, to raise the material value of the worldly power upbuilt thereon to its uttermost pitch: Karl the Great, whose predecessor had entirely set aside at last the puffed-up and degenerate race of the Merwingen, gained and governed the whole German world, together with the former West-Roman Empire so far as German peoples dwelt therein; he accordingly might deem himself de facto successor to the rights of the Roman Cæsars, and claim their confirmation by the Romish Pontiff.

  Arrived at this high stand-point, we now must prepare ourselves for a survey of the world's condition at that time, and indeed in the sense of the mighty Nibelung himself; for this is the point from whence the historic import of that often-mentioned Frankish saga is to be taken more clearly in eye.

  When Karl the Great looked down from the height of his West-Roman Kaiser-throne upon the world he knew, the first thing to strike him, must have been that solely in himself and family had the German ur-Kingship survived: all the royal races of the German stems related to him, so far as language proved a common origin, had passed away or been destroyed by subjugation, and he thus might deem himself the only representative and lawful heir of German Ur-Kinghood. This state of affairs would very naturally lead him and his nearest kin, the Franks, to regard themselves as the peculiarly-privileged, the oldest and most imperishable stem-race of all the German nation, and eventually to find an ideal right to that pretension in their primitive stem-saga. In that stem-saga, as in every ur-old saga of like kind, an originally religious core is plainly visible. Though we left that kernel on one side at its earliest mentioning, it now is time to view it closer.

  Origin and evolution of the Nibelungen-myth.

  Man receives his first impressions from surrounding Nature, and none of her phenomena will have reacted on him so forcibly from the beginning, as that which seemed to him to form the first condition of the existence, or at least of his knowledge, of everything contained in Creation: and this is Light, the Day, the Sun. Thanks, and finally worship, would be paid this element the first; the more so, as its opposite, Darkness, Night, seemed joyless, hence unfriendly and fear-compelling. Now, as man drew all his joy and animation from the light, it soon would come to mean the very fount of Being: it became the begetter, the father, the god; the breaking of day out of night at last appeared to him the victory of Light over Darkness, of Warmth over Cold, and so forth; and this idea may have been the first to breed in man a moral consciousness and lead him to distinction of the useful and the harmful, the friendly and hostile, Good and Bad.

  So far, at anyrate, this earliest nature-impression must be regarded as the common basis of all Religions of every people. In the individualising of these general ideas derived from physical observation, however, is to be sought the gradually-conspicuous cleavage of religions according to the character of different nations. Now the stem-saga of the Franks has the high pre-eminence that, in keeping with the stem's peculiarity, it developed more and more from this beginning to historic life, whereas a similar growth of the religious myth into a genealogic saga is nowhere to be found among the other German stems: in exact degree as these lagged behind in active influence on history, did their stem-sagas stop short at the religious myth (superlatively the case with the Scandinavians), or get lost in wholly undeveloped fragments at the first shock with historic nations more alive.

  At the farthest point to which we can trace it, the Frank stem-saga shews the individualised Light or Sun-god, who conquers and lays low the monster of ur-Chaotic night:-this is the original meaning of Siegfried's fight with the Dragon, a fight like that Apollo fought against the dragon Python. Yet, as Day succumbs to Night again, as Summer in the end must yield to Winter, Siegfried too is slain at last: so the god became man, and as a mortal man he fills our soul with fresh and stronger sympathy; for, a sacrifice to his deed of blessing us, he wakes the moral motive of Revenge, i.e. the longing to avenge his death upon his murderer, and thus renew his deed. The ur-old fight is now continued by ourselves, and its changeful issue is just the same as that eternal alternation of day and night, summer and winter,-and lastly of the human race itself, in ceaseless sway from life to death, from triumph to defeat, from joy to grief, and thus perennially rejuvenating in itself the active consciousness of the immortal fund of Man and Nature. The quintessence of this constant motion, thus of Life, at last in "Wuotan" (Zeus) found expression as the chiefest God, the Father and Pervader of the All. Though his nature marked him as the highest god, and as such he needs must take the place of father to the other deities, yet was he nowise an historically older god, but sprang into existence from man's later, higher consciousness of self; consequently he is more abstract than the older Nature-god, whilst the latter is more corporeal and, so to phrase it, more personally inborn in man.

  If this may pass as a general statement of the evolutionary path of Saga, and finally of History, from the ur-Myth, our next concern will be that weighty point in the fashioning of the Franks' stem-saga which gave this race its quite specific physiognomy,-to wit, the Hoard .

  In the religious mythos of the Scandinavians the term Nifelheim , i.e. Nibel=Nebelheim [the Home of Haze] comes down to us as designation of the (subterranean) sojourn of the Night-spirits, "Schwarzalben," in opposition to the heavenly dwelling of the "Asen" and "Lichtalben" ["Light-elves"]. These Black-elves, "Niflûngar," children of Night and Death, burrow the earth, find out its inner treasures, smelt and smith its ore: golden gear and keen-edged weapons are their work. Now we find the name of "Nibelungen," their treasures, arms and trinkets, again in the Frankish stem-saga, but with the distinction that the idea originally shared by all the German stems has here evolved to ethical historic import.

  When Light vanquished Darkness, when Siegfried slew the Nibelungen-dragon, he further won as victor's spoil the Nibelungen-hoard it guarded. But the possession of this Hoard-whose properties increase his might beyond all measure, since he thereby rules the Nibelungen-is also reason of his death: for the dragon's heir now plots to win it back. This heir despatches him by stealth, as night the day, and drags him down into the gloomy realm of Death: Siegfried thus becomes himself a Nibelung. Though doomed to death by acquisition of the Hoard, each sequent generation strives to seize it : its inmost essence drives it on, as with necessity of Nature, as day has ever to dethrone the night anew. For in the Hoard there lies withal the secret of all earthly might: it is the Earth itself with all its splendour, which in joyous shining of the Sun at dawn of day we recognise as our possession to enjoy, when Night, that held its ghostly, gloomy dragon's-wings spread fearsomely above the world's rich stores, has finally been routed.

  If we look closer at this Hoard, the Nibelungen's special work , in it we recognise at first the metal bowels of the earth, and next what is prepared therefrom: arms, ruler's-ring, and stores of gold. So that Hoard included in itself the means of gaining and insuring mastery, as also the one Talisman of Rule: the hero-god who won it first, and thus became a Nibelung partly through his power and partly through his death, left as heirloom to his race the active right to claim the Hoard: to avenge the slain and keep or win the Hoard afresh, this stress makes out the soul of all the race; by this it may be recognised throughout the saga, and above all in its history, that race of the Nibelungen-Franken.

  Now, should it be thought too daring to assume that even in the ur-home of the German tribes that wondrous race once reigned above them all, or, if the other German stems have sprung from it, that at their head it once had ruled all other peoples on that Asiatic mountain-isle, at least a later phase is irrefutable,-that it actually governed all the German stems in Europe, and at their head, as we soon shall see, both claimed and strove for the dominion of every nation in the world. That deeply innate stress, now stronger and now weaker, this race of Kings appears to have referred in every age to its prime origin; and Karl the Great knew perfectly what he was doing, and why, when he had all songs of the stem-saga most carefully collected and transcribed: he knew they would confirm the Folk's bel
ief in the ur-old right of his dynasty.

  The rank of Romish Kaiser and the Roman stem-saga.

  The sovereign-instinct of the Nibelungen, till then more brutal in its satisfaction, was led at last by Karl the Great towards an ideal aim: this psychologic moment (der hierzu anregende Moment) must be sought in Karl's assumption of the Roman Cæsardom.

  If we cast a glance upon the extra-German world, so far as it lay bare to Karl the Great, we find the selfsame kingless plight as with the subject German stems. The Romanic nations ruled by Karl had long since lost their royal races through the Romans; the Slavonic nations, little valued in themselves and destined for a more or less thorough Germanising, had never won for their ruling races, now also falling to decay, a recognition equal to the German's. Rome alone retained historic claim to rule, and that to rule the world; that world-dominion had been exerted by the Cæsars in the name of a people, not of an ur-old royal race, but nevertheless in form of Monarchy. These Cæsars, in latter days capriciously selected first from this, then that component of the brew of nations, had never had to prove a racial right to the highest sovereignty in all the world. The deep corruption, impotence, and shameful foundering of this Roman Cæsarate-propped up at last by nothing but the German mercenaries, who had possession of the Roman Empire long years before its actual extinction-had certainly not faded from the memory of its Frankish conquerors. Yet, for all the personal weakness and depravity of the emperors known to the Germans, a deep awe and reverence of that rank under whose authority this highly-cultured Roman world was ruled had been implanted in the minds of the barbaric intruders, and there had stayed until these later times. And in that feeling there might lurk, not only respect for a higher culture, but also an old remembrance of the first brush of the German peoples with the Romans, who under Julius Cæsar once had reared a strong and lasting dam against their restless inroads.