Actors should have their peace between acts. But these, busy at a performance of the “Nibelungen” in Worms, answer questions from an intrusive reporter - maybe also a reporter, we don't know that exactly, after all we only get to read the minutes of the interviews. For example the conversation with the actress Brunhild (“born in Hamburg in 1998, in possession of an acting and pilot's license”), who says of her role that the queen is “a collector who collects heads like other awards. Once you've started collecting, you never stop. Whoever has the first head also wants the last. ”Or with the actor who played the old warrior Dietrich von Bern, who talks about the difference between cake fights and real slaughter. And finally the actorwho gives the Rüdiger von Bechelaren and determines the charm of the Nibelungen material: “It doesn't matter who plays which role in it, in the end almost everyone dies and everyone gets their money's worth, everyone loses his or her own head and is literally with himself . "

Tilman Spreckelsen

Editor in the features section.

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The Nibelungenlied, written around 1200 and the best-known mediaeval material alongside the Arthurian legend for about 200 years, is the starting point for Felicitas Hoppe's novel “The Nibelungen” with the distinctive genre “A German silent film”.

Among the titles nominated for the German Book Prize, it is one of the most playful, most formally demanding and at the same time one of the funniest.

Anyone who hoped for a straightforward retelling of the Nibelungen plot, however, will be disappointed, but must also be asked why they do not resort to one of the dozen existing texts that do just that: the reproduction of a story of the young dragon slayer Siegfried , who comes to Worms with his gold treasure to marry the beautiful Kriemhild, whose brother Gunther helps to win the equally beautiful Brunhild on Iceland, is murdered by the sinister Hagen and later robbed of his treasure. Kriemhild, however, does not come to terms with either and devises a monstrous plan of revenge that brings death to practically all Burgundian knights and, in the end, you too.

Hoppe also recounts all of this, but with her this material becomes a work of art with the most beautifully flowing boundaries in terms of both content and form. Under major chapters such as “The Rhine”, “The Danube” and “The Lament” the plot structure of the original becomes visible, which is divided into two parts and a third, which is often neglected and yet, in contrast to the others, is indispensable for the structure of the work is. Hoppe, however, sets an accent with two more chapters, both headed with “Pause” and placed between the three others, which runs counter to an overly planned flow of action from the source - Siegfried's arrival - to the mouth - the great slaughter.