[73] In reply to a letter addressed to Professor Elster on October 4,
    1914, the writer received the following most kind reply on
    November 23:  “Die Frage, die Sie an mich richten ist leicht
    beantwortet:  Heine hat Loeben in seinen Schriften nicht erwAehnt,
    aber das besagt nicht viel; er hat manchen benutzt, den er nicht
    nennt.  Und es kann gar keinem Zweifel unterliegen, dass
    Loeben fUer die Lorelei Heines unmittelbares Vorbild ist;
    darauf habe ich Oefter hingewiesen, aber wohl auch andere.  Das
    Taschenbuch Urania fUer das Jahr 1821, wo Loebens Gedicht
    u.  Novelle zuerst erschienen, ist unserem Dichter zweifellos zu
    Gesicht gekommen.”  No one can view Professor Elster in any other
    light than as an eminent authority on Heine, but his certainty
    here must be accepted with reserve, and his “wohl auch andere” is,
    in view of the fact that, he was by no means the first, and
    certainly not the last, to make this assertion, a trifle
    disconcerting.

[74] The ultimate determining of sources is an ungrateful theme.  Some
    excellent suggestions on this subject are offered by Hans Rohl in
    his Die Aeltere Romantik und die Kunst des jungen Goethe,
    Berlin, 1909, pp. 70-72.  This work was written under the general
    leadership of Professor Elster.  The disciple would, in this case,
    hardly agree with the master.  Pissin likewise speaks wisely in
    discussing the influence of Novalis on Loeben in his monograph on
    the latter, pp. 97-98. and 129-30.  And Heine himself (Elster
    edition, V. 294) says in regard to the question whether Hegel did
    borrow so much from Schelling:  “Nichts ist lAecherlicher als das
    reklamierte Eigentumsrecht an Ideen.”  He then shows how the ideas
    were not original with Schelling either; he had them from
    Spinoza.  And it is just so here.  Brentano started the legend;
    Heine goes back to him indirectly.  Eichenidorff and Vogt directly;
    Schreiber borrowed from Vogt, Loeben from Schreiber, and Heine
    from Schreiber—­and thereafter it would be impossible to say who
    borrowed from whom.

[75] The majority of the Loreleidichtungen can be found in: 
    Opern-Handbuch, by Hugo Riemann, Leipzig, 1886:  Zur
    Geschichte der MAerchenoper, by Leopold Schmidt, Halle, 1895;
    Die Loreleysage in Dichtung und Musik, by Hermann Seeliger,
    Leipzig, 1898.  Seeliger took the majority of his titles from
    Nassau in seinen Sagen, Geschichten und Liedern, by
    Henniger, Wiesbaden, 1845.  At least he says so, but one is
    inclined to doubt the statement, for “die meisten Balladen” have
    been written since 1845.  Seeliger’s book is on the whole
    unsatisfactory.  He has, for example, Schreiber improving on, and
    remodeling Loeben’s saga; but Schreiber was twenty-three years
    older than Loeben, and wrote his saga at least three years before
    Loeben wrote his.