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More diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!

January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

cahn

Cahn, do you know this story? It's the oldest surviving poem in Old High German (and only a fragment of it survives), and I remember reading it in my Old High German class.

I have not read the Hildebrandslied! (If it's a poem from OE or Medieval Welsh, I'm probably at least in-passing familiar with it... but not necessarily with lit in other languages.) I'm kind of sad about this, as I was much more motivated to read this kind of thing twenty years ago than I am now... but maybe it will happen!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The fragment that survives is only 68 lines! Here's a translation. (Note: I haven't done the work of seeing if it's a good translation, but, you know, it's a translation.)

Since what survives a fragment with many lacunae, it can be confusing, so quick plot summary:

Hildebrand: father
Hadubrand: son

Hildebrand and Hadubrand are about to kill each other in combat. Hildebrand asks for Hadubrand's genealogy. Hadubrand says his father was named Hildebrand and went off to war 30 years ago, [insert more identifying details] and is dead.

Hildebrand goes, "No, that's me! Let's not kill each other!"

Hadubrand thinks it's a trick and insists they kill each other.

Honor requires they fight to the death.

The fragment breaks off while they're fighting, but this is early Germanic poetry so it probably ended in death. :P Comparanda suggest it's usually the father killing the son, and if this whole episode reminds you of Cuchulainn killing his son in single combat after they don't recognize each other...yep!

Also, Wikipedia says "Legendary material about Hildebrand survived in Germany into the 17th century and also spread to Scandinavia." Do you know this story,

luzula?

From:

selenak

Literary footnote: now, in the nineteenth century, all the rediscovery of medieval epics (in the case of this one by the Brothers Grimm, btw, who wrote the first modern commentary on it) was a big thing. But someone like Peter H., Germarn mercanary living in the 17th century, could not have read it a version of this epic. He must have learned the story via oral tradition. It's also fascinating that he's so sure that Hildebrand and Hadubrand fought in Mantua and that this is why the two statues he sees are depicting them. Because Hildebrand's boss and protegé, Dietrich von Bern (that's the name under which he shows up both in the Hildebrandlied and in the Nibelungenlied), commonly gets identified with Theoderich, the Goth King ruling most of Italy for a while. Peter Hagendorf doesn't say, but I'm assuming he, too, makes that identification when staying Mantua is where the Hildebrand/Hadubrand fight took place.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Dietrich von Bern (that's the name under which he shows up both in the Hildebrandlied and in the Nibelungenlied), commonly gets identified with Theoderich, the Goth King ruling most of Italy for a while.

Where "Bern" is not the better-known Bern of Switzerland, but Verona.

It's also fascinating that he's so sure that Hildebrand and Hadubrand fought in Mantua

Yes!

From:

cahn

Oh, huhhhh! That's interesting, thanks!

From:

cahn

OK, that was great, thank you for the link and the plot summary!

Yeah... I think I kind of need fix-it for basically ALL EARLY POETRY, omg. Hmm, I should give this some thought before Yuletide. I've gotten great fic for Mabinogion, Der Ring des Nibelungen (which I realize isn't quite the same, but which is related enough that it slots in the same part of my head), and Preiddeu Annwn (all three fics on AO3 were presents for me :D though I wouldn't call any of them fix-it).

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I can give you that too! It's called the Jüngeres Hildebrandslied, it's also short, and it exists because the medievals agreed with you. Or as Wikipedia says, "Even though some of the later medieval versions end in reconciliation, this can be seen as a concession to the more sentimental tastes of a later period." :P

Also according to Wikipedia,

The textual form of the Jüngeres Hildebrandslied is a product of the fifteenth century, though its material is clearly much older...It is transmitted in five manuscripts, beginning with a fragment from 1459, with the first complete version found in the Dresdener Heldenbuch. The poem was printed numerous times beginning in the sixteenth century, and continued to be printed into the eighteenth century. The ballad even ended up in the collection of German folk poetry known as Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805). The poem and the melody to which it was sung were both extremely well known throughout this period.

I think that answers our question of how Hagendorf knew about it, and tells us which version of the story he'd probably heard (the fix-it fic version)!