SOURCE: “Interpretations” in A Preface to the “Nibelungenlied”, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987, pp. 144-66.

In the following excerpt, Andersson summarizes the new approaches taken in critical analyses of the Nibelungenlied during the last half of the twentieth century.

Two publications by Nelly Dürrenmatt and Friedrich Panzer in 1945 marked a turning point in the analysis of the Nibelungenlied and ushered in a period of postwar criticism that differed distinctly from the work done during the forty years before the war.¹ These earlier years were dominated by Andreas Heusler, whose pertinent studies appeared from 1902 to 1941.² Heusler's project was to comprehend the Nibelungenlied against the background of the earlier forms of the legend. Much of his work was therefore devoted to a reconstruction of these forms through a painstaking comparison of the surviving versions. After the war scholars came to believe that his approach was too backward-looking, and strenuous efforts...