Lang’s “Die Nibelungen”

The Feminine Run Amuck:

Lang’s Apocalyptic Vision of Brunhild and Kriemhild in Die Nibelungen

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It has been said that Fritz Lang’s five-hour, two-part film, Die Nibelungen, is the greatest fantasy epic of all time – certainly from the German Silent Era of the 1920’s. Further, Lang has also been credited with maintaining the narrative integrity of the original epic poem, Das Nibelungenlied, written anonymously around A.D. 1200, but based upon previous oral storytelling traditions circa A.D. 500. The earliest known accounts of Sifrit, or Sigrid, belong to primitive Norse and Icelandic tales of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer. Das Nibelungenlied is a medieval retelling with distinctly Germanic overtones that speaks directly to medieval notions of not only courtly romance, but also instructions and warnings regarding the role of women in medieval society. Fritz Lang’s resurrection of the tale is more than an apocalyptic vision of masculine femininity – it is an attempt to illustrate supposed parallels between the destructive forces of both feminine displacement and social chaos.

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Lang’s views, as demonstrated by dedications at the beginning and end of his film, were expressly formulated to inspire an awakening and resurgence of German nationalism and historicism. Contrary to some scholarly commentaries, however, Lang did not, in fact, preserve the narrative integrity of Das Nibelungenlied in his filmic reconstruction of the tale. The most significant divergence from the tale can be seen in the characterizations of the Icelandic Queen, Brunhild, and the Burgundian Princess, Kriemhild. Where the medieval poem revolves around strong family ties and relationships, Lang’s film creates a setting of extreme dysfunction – to the extent that all but one of the players, Siegfried, are flattened into mono-dimensional representations of destructive motives. Siegfried, the single multidimensional character and supposed hero of the tale, dies early in the story, leaving in the wake of his death an irrepressible, inescapable annihilation of the known world.

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Das Nibelungenlied, and, indeed, its Norse and Icelandic forerunners, suggests a theme of the destructive power of lies. In “The Three Sins of Kriemhilt,” Dawn Osselman offers as well the supporting theme that “man carries the seeds of his destruction in his character” (230). It is through the unusual agency of medieval female heroes that these self-destructive human traits are played out against a medieval backdrop of the Germanic Burgundians in Worms, the Nibelungs of the great Scandinavian North, and the Huns of eastern Eurasia. Traditionally, these cultures have produced the most ferocious, intimidating male heroes in primitive folkloric traditions: Germanic Knights, Vikings, and the unstoppable, marauding Huns.

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Why, in this male-oriented tradition of heroic folklore, are we given a holocaustic story of the Amazonian strength and disdain of Brunhild, Queen of Iceland, and the Knightly heroism and honor-bound retribution of the Burgundian princess Kriemhild? Like many other tales of primitive and medieval origin, the roles of women and the feminine are a recognized source of both social importance and order. The original epic stories carried archetypal patterns and motifs of family and home values, both of which are well served in Das Nibelungenlied. Lang’s film, however, reassigns these values, overshadowing the primitive meanings with his own fears of apocalyptical changes in German nationalistic awareness by using powerful illustrations of the feminine run amuck in society – a ubiquitous patriarchal fear that permeates much of our literary heritage from the Victorian and Early Modern ages that overlapped during Lang’s early life.

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Lang participated in, and promoted, the idea that early twentieth century Germany was marching resolutely toward its own annihilation, brought about by a watering-down of German historicism through the infiltration of other cultures and their religions and value systems, not to mention the additional physical changes resulting from rapidly encroaching industrialization and modernization. Die Nibelungen contained subtle ties to nationalistic statements of concern for racial purity and a resurgence of pride in the homeland. 

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In spite of the fact that Lang was of Jewish extract through his mother, Die Nibelungen famously inspired Hitler and Goebbels. It is a certainty that Lang’s sociopolitical leanings were opposed to such a connection – his marriage to actress/screenwriter Thea Von Harbou ended when she joined the Nazi Party in 1932. Two years later, Lang fled to France and later resettled in America. He became renowned for his contributions to the genre of Film Noir.

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In Die Nibelungen, Hitler saw the blond, muscular Siegfried as a symbol of German youth and imposed his own perversions of heroic resilience upon the character, translating Siegfried’s honor and loyalty into a statement that supported the pursuit of Aryan purity – Die Nibelungen has been recorded by history to have been Hitler’s favorite film. Film theorist Siegfried Kracauer asserted that it was “a key film in the nationalist uprising from Caligari to Hitler,” and argued that the film in its entirety contained “an inherent necessity [that] predetermin[ed] the disastrous sequence of love, hatred, jealousy, and thirst for revenge” (Lang, 2002). Lang, however, did not support Hitler’s perversion of national sentiment and joined the Nationalist Association of Film Directors in 1933 (Lang, 2002). In addition, his filmmaking career in America, though classified as Film Noir, was darkly, famously anti-Fascist (Lang, 2002).

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The connection between Hitler’s interpretations of Die Nibelungen and Lang’s intentions are made clear in the representations of Brunhild and Kriemhild. In the film, Brunhild is the archetype of the dark sister. She has dark hair and dark eyes, and her overwhelming personality trait is that of an Amazonian man-hater. We see the extremity of Lang’s vision in his reconstruction of the Icelandic queen’s castle: all of her attendants – indeed, all of her subjects that are visible to the viewer – appear to be women.

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Brunhild’s reception of the Burgundians is both disdainful and angry. In the medieval poem she transforms into her “natural” feminine, submissive role immediately upon being bested by King Gunter (who was aided in the conquest by an invisible Sifried). In the movie, however, her attitude toward men only intensifies in its antagonism. She rejects Gunter as her husband and must be physically cowed (once again, by Siegfried, in secrecy and darkness) before she will submit to a physical union with Gunter.

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This act also occurs in the medieval legend, but it is accompanied by the patriarchal logic that Brunhild must be brought into physical submission or her defiance will become a legend that subverts women all over the world. Sifried is honor-bound by a social and family code to set aright Brunhild’s unnatural inclinations toward masculine authority.

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No such sentiment is apparent in Die Nibelungen – Brunhild is representative of the alien, unnatural component in society, the destructive infiltration of “otherness” that perverts national purity. It is inevitable that her presence will bring about the destruction of both the national hero, Siegfried (or the German Youth), and the holocaustic annihilation of the race of Burgundians (or the disappearance of German National Awareness). The Brunhild of the film serves a one-dimensional purpose that has only nebulous ties to her actual feminine self. It is the patriarchal perversion of this construction of the feminine that serves the function of illustrating what Hitler, and in a different way, Lang, perceived to be the subversion of German Nationalism.

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Likewise, Kriemhild serves a similar purpose in the film, although her role is far more destructive. As a Burgundian native, she represents the infiltrated and occupied German homeland. Kriemhild is a woman who demonstrates knightly, or masculine, behaviors. She fulfills her revenge on her own people through the aid of her masculine femininity, tricking her second husband into being the acceptable patriarchal figure whose unknowing participation in her scheme for revenge legitimizes her false offer of forgiveness and goodwill toward her family. The Burgundians are lured to the kingdom of the Huns where they are systematically, and inevitably, drawn into their own destruction. In Die Nibelungen, Kriemhild becomes symbolic of the progressive march toward apocalypse of the German national traditions.

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She is neither purely Burgundian nor purely alien to her people. In giving herself first to Sifried, she invites the alien culture of the Nibelungs into her homeland; but when she marries Attila the Hun, she pollutes her Christian heritage with pagan despotism. Attila’s homeland is befouled by the filth and disorder of his culture, a condition to which Kriemhild submits herself both physically and spiritually. Her true, annihilistic nature is revealed when she completes her revenge by drawing a sword to kill Hagen, the murderer of Sifried. She completes the image of national subversion by raising a sword to kill her own countryman.

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Lang never addresses the moral discrepancy of loyalties subverted by lies, at least not those that affect the women in the film. Brunhild’s strength and queenly authority, and Kriemhild’s nobility and passion, are easily suppressed by the overriding patriarchy of social constructions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These female characters, along with their archetypal importance, are as thoroughly subverted and infiltrated as any of Lang’s notions about German nationalism. They become pawns in an old game of feminine oppression in which women are characteristically denied egalitarian justice or any moral or ethical expression of personal strength, steadfast loyalty, and social significance. In contrast, the anonymously written medieval epic upon which Lang supposedly based his film, attributes to women and the feminine a core of inner strength and purpose that is equally as capable of nobility or annihilistic subversion and destructiveness as any traditional construction of the masculine. From this proceeds a balance, or order, in medieval sociopolitical structures that has little to do with nationalistic concerns and more to do with the diversity of intense family relationships that continue to exist today, as always before in human history.