In Bibliophiles and Bibliothieves, Opritsa Popa has documented what might justifiably be described as the most celebrated case of looting of two German cultural treasures by a member of the U.S. Army at the end of World War II and their subsequent odyssey across both an ocean and a continent: the pilfering from a cellar in Bad Wildungen of the ninth-century Liber Sapientiae, containing the two leaves of the oldest extant German heroic poem, the Old High German Hildebrandslied, along with the fourteenth-century illuminated Willehalm codex, both of which had been removed from the State Library in Kassel for protection from bombing raids.

Within the English-speaking world, no work of the German High Middle Ages is better known than the Nibelungenlied, which has stirred the imagination of artists and readers far beyond its land of origin. Its international influence extends from literature to music, art, film, politics and propaganda, psychology, archeology, and military history. Now for the first time all references to the vast Nibelungen tradition have been catalogued in this comprehensive encyclopedia containing nearly 1000 entries by several dozen international contributors, including the most distinguished scholars in the field. Readers will find illuminating passages on a variety of topics, including literary and extra-literary references, characters and place names, significant motifs and concepts, historical background, and cultural reception through the centuries. This monumental work is an invaluable guide to a fascinating, age-old tradition.

Contents:
Literary authors and works; Medieval characters and places; Themes, motifs, objects, key words; Sources: history, legend, archaeology, manuscript collections; Scholars and scholarship; Reception of the Nibelungen theme in German-speaking countries: literary authors and works; Reception of the Nibelungen theme outside German-speaking countries (including translations); Music and composers; Art, artists, films, filmmakers, sculpture, sculptors; Miscellaneous (education, historians, politics, psychology, military).

Key topics in important German medieval work surveyed and reassessed. Few works of the middle ages can boast the `staying power' of the 'heroic' Nibelungenlied and few have generated more controversy both among scholars and the educated public. The Nibelung theme has been ubiquitous over the past 150 years in a wide spectrum of literary and as well as non-literary endeavors. It was used by Friedrich Hebbel as the basis for one of his best psychological dramas, by Wagner, along with the Old Norse analogues, for Die Ring des Nibelungen, and by the film maker Fritz Lang for his 1920s Expressionist masterpiece, Die Nibelungen. Its heroes provided suitable models for German troops who marched against Napoleon, while by the end of World War II, the Nibelung tradition had provided material for a speech by Goering, the name for Germany's western line of defense, and significantly, the cuffband designation of the last 'division' formed in the elite Combat SS. This Companion to the Nibelungenlied draws on the expertise of scholars from German, Britain, and the United States to offer the reader fresh perspectives on a wide variety of topics regarding the epic: the latest theories regarding manuscript tradition, authorship, conflict, combat, and politics, the Otherworld and its inhabitants, eroticism (in both the Nibelungenlied and Wagner's Ring), the reception both of the Nibelungenlied in the twentieth century and of its most intriguing protagonist, Kriemhild, key concepts used by the poet, the heroic, feudal, and courtly elements in the work, and an analysis of archetypal elements from the perspective of Jungian psychology. Winder McConnell is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis.

Appended to most of the major manuscripts of the German national epic poem, the Nibelungenlied, the Diu Klage (Lament) is the first known commentary on this great thirteenth-century poem. Composed in rhyming couplets, the 4360-verse Klage describes the aftermath of the debacle at the court of Attila the Hun and the manner in which news of the catastrophe is carried back to the land of the Burgundians. The poet attempts a fascinating reconciliation of Christianity with a pre-Christian ethos (revenge = loyalty = a place in heaven). Of particular note in this regard is the pro-Kriemhild stance of the Klage's author and the concern demonstrated for continuity at the Burgundian court. The present translation (based on Manuscript B in St Gallen) will provide English-speaking readers with the first opportunity to acquaint themselves with the commentary.