Nibelungenlied

The Nibelungenlied is an epic poem in Middle High German, written around the year 1200 by an anonymous poet thought to have come from the region of Passau, drawing on Germanic heroic legends with roots in events of the fifth and sixth centuries. Composed in four-line stanzas meant for singing, though no original melody survives, it is considered the first heroic epic set down in writing in the German vernacular. Its first half tells of Prince Siegfried's arrival at Worms to marry Kriemhild, his deception of the warrior queen Brunhild, and his murder by the vassal Hagen; its second half follows Kriemhild's marriage to the Hunnish king Etzel and her revenge, which ends in the destruction of the Burgundian court. Rediscovered in 1755, it came to be called the German Iliad and was later treated as a national epic, a status later complicated by its appropriation for propaganda under the Nazi regime.