German scholarship, to the world of Grimm and Lachmann, F. H. v. d. Hagen and W. Müller, is to say good-bye to the Prussian drill sergeant with the last edition of the Exercir règlement in his hand, and to stand beside der grimme Hagen as he holds the door of the fated hall alone against the onset of the Hunnish host.
But the adventurous daring of the pioneer must give place to the more humdrum virtues of the settler. It is no disparagement of M. Lichtenberger to say that in the absence of marked enthusiasm for his subject-matter, in the preservation of a dispassionately judicial frame of mind, he faithfully reflects the current tone of scientific research.
M. Lichtenberger's view of the development of the Nibelungen legend is as follows:—
"In the year 436 Gundicarius, King of the Burgundians, is slain, and his people well-nigh exterminated by the Huns. A remnant take refuge in Savoy. About the year 500 their king Gondioc promulgates a code in which he names as his predecessors Gibica, Gondomar, Gislahar, Gundahar. In these historical Burgundian kings we have the Gibich and his three sons, Gunther, Giselher, and Gemot of the legend.
"In 453 Attila weds Ildico and perishes mysteriously the same night. The imagination of the German tribes, struck by these facts, connected them. Attila became the destroyer of the Burgundian kings, for which his own death was an act of revenge wrought by Ildico, who was figured as a Burgundian princess."
So far the second part of the story; the first is furnished by the adventures of Siegfried, posthumous son of Siegmund, brought up in the forest by a wizard smith, slayer of a dragon, winner of a magic treasure, waker of a maiden sunk in supernatural slumber, husband of Gunther's sister (Grimhild = Ildico), wooer of Brunhild for his brother-in-law, treacherously assassinated by Gunther and his chiefest warrior Hagen.
The two portions of the story thus easily fall into one.
