New insights into the Pied Piper story E-Book

Gernot Hüsam

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 354

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is probably one of the best-known legends in the German-speaking world. The term "Pied Piper" has long been part of the German language. But what exactly is the historical background of this legend, what is its true core? Scholars have been arguing about this for centuries, as the book "Neuestes zur Rattenfängersage" by Gernot Hüsam shows us. The author meticulously traces which interpretations there have been and when, be it the collective emigration of young people, an illness or the Battle of Sedemünder. However, Hüsam does not find these paths completely convincing, but instead establishes a connection to the pagan places of worship in the area and the retention of pagan festivals in the Middle Ages.

Leseprobe

New insights into the Pied Piper story

Hamelin's almost solved criminal case

Foreword

The pandemic of 2020 with its restrictions provided the impetus for this book about the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. My closer involvement with this highly emotionally charged topic was not initiated by literary means, but by a strange discovery in the autumn of 1987 on the rocky cliffs of the northern Ith near Coppenbrügge, 15 kilometers east of Hamelin. At that time, I was busy setting up a new museum in the castle of the Counts of Spiegelberg in Coppenbrügge. Among the written documents from Irmgard Netter's collection for the newly planned museum was a work signed by the author Waltraud Woeller on the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which she had written in 1957. With this habilitation thesis, the then young author applied for the Chair of Ethnology at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Irmgard Netter, philologist and owner of the Lindenbrunn Sanatorium near Coppenbrügge, had herself collected a lot of written material on the legend of the Pied Piper. This later became very helpful for my research. Above all, she kept the many articles on the legend that appeared repeatedly in the local Hamelin newspaper DEWEZET.

It was only when I discovered the rock faces in the Ith that I became interested in Waltraud Woeller's theory. She didn't know about the rock faces back in 1956 and neither did the mayor of Coppenbrügge, Fritz Beckmann. He had referred her to the Ith to the Teufelsküche for her research, because her hot trail in search of the legendary place "Koppen" had led her to Coppenbrügge. For me, her theory now took on a completely different, highly explosive background if it turned out that there was a connection between the rock heads, the Devil's Kitchen and the legend.

I then investigated this assumption about individual aspects of the legend in more detail in nine separate essays in the weekend edition of the local newspaper under the heading "Feierabend". I was able to publish some of the results of my research into the old sources in three more detailed essays in the yearbook of the Hamelin Museum Association. Although there was a response to this, acceptance of the rock heads was still difficult in scientifically enlightened circles. For example, the then director of the State Museum in Hanover, Günter Wegner, described the rock faces in the Ith as an ideological legacy from the time of National Socialist rule, where these untenable claims had already been made, in a statement on the TV series "Bilderbuch Deutschland" about the Weserbergland. More well-meaning archaeologists consider the faces on the rocks to be the accidental result of natural weathering.

What is new about the legend is that the theory developed by Waltraud Woeller about the Ith near Coppenbrügge has received additional confirmation through my intensive study of the mountain after correction of some fatal geographical errors, but also a shift and expansion, even a dramatization, which was already recognized by Erich Heinicke from Magdeburg, but which remained stuck in conjecture due to his lack of local knowledge.

The mountain stands for an old world view that was replaced by a new one, the Christian one. Both the sacred mountain and the old faith have fallen into oblivion; only in the legend does something of this forbidden place "Koppen" resonate, surrounded by "Calvarie", this unsolved, dark secret. This ideological conflict came together in the figure of the Pied Piper and can still be felt in all its dynamism today. Perhaps this is the reason for the fascination and worldwide spread of the legend.

The large number of pictures in the book is not intended to illustrate, but to illustrate, but also to provide evidence for the facts found and to make it easier to search and look them up in the Latin dictionary. The pictures and text are now intended to summarize all my research efforts, not as a novel, but as an exciting non-fiction book.

Gernot Hüsam

To get ahead of the plagiarism hunters, I have decided to italicize all verbatim quotations, as well as the captions, in order to set them off more strongly from the running text and to better emphasize standing terms.

1

Why this book?

The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin has fascinated many people throughout the ages and lands. The way it is told today goes back to the version by the Brothers Grimm from 1816. According to the story, the medieval town suffers from a plague of rats, from which a colorfully dressed stranger frees it with his magical flute playing. As the town fathers cheat him out of his wages, he seeks revenge and comes back a second time. This time he lures 130 Hamelin children and young people out of the town with his seductive flute playing on June 26, 1284 and disappears with them into a cave on the Koppenberg, east of Hamelin. This is what we are told by the main sources, to which further details have been added over time, such as the desperate search by the parents, the time of the abduction during the church service and the tradition that no more music may be played in Bungelosenstraße to commemorate the terrible deed.

The repeated preoccupation with the legend has led to a flood of writings, books, works of art and research about it. And it has lost none of its attraction to this day. "So why another book?", the reader will ask himself, who has nevertheless opened this book, because people are curious by nature. This book should certainly arouse curiosity, because new insights into the legend and its dark background can still be discovered as long as this criminal case from the Middle Ages remains unsolved.

a. A look at the many writings and works of art

This is not intended to be a mere list of the almost immeasurably proliferating writings, but rather to shed light on the time-related backgrounds that seem to be responsible for the ever-increasing interest in the legend. For the first two hundred and seventy years after the catastrophic year of 1284, an almost iron silence prevailed among the people of Hamelin, because no chronicle reports on it1, if it were not for a few ecclesiastical texts such as the rhyming prayer in Latin written in the same year, which was recorded in a missal, the "Passionale Sanctorum" of the Hamelin St. Boniface Abbey. Bonifatiusstifts (see 3d for more details), or the former Gothic stained glass window in the Marktkirche (the Bürgerkirche) with its German text inscription falls into this period of silence, as well as the slogan beam high up on the Pied Piper's House on the long side facing Bungelosenstraße. Its text is almost identical to that of the stained glass window in the Marktkirche (see 3c for more details).

Another reference to the events of June 26, 1284 is an entry of the legend in the Lüneburg manuscript2 from around 1440/50, a Latin text written by a clerical pen, in which the first details of the miraculous story in Hamelin appear, such as an eyewitness to the children's departure. Pictorial representations also belong to the Middle Ages, not only in the market church but also in town houses, where the event was captured in precious stained glass windows. (More details under 3e) The matter of Hamelin's own chronology3 is intended to point to a new beginning in the town's history, as the severity of the event must have been experienced by the people of Hamelin as an incisive turning point. However, it has nothing to contribute to research into the content of the legend.

The supposedly quiet period of the Middle Ages was then followed by the gradual development of a new era, heralded by Martin Luther's Reformation and driven even further by the invention of the printing press and the new and varied means of disseminating information that it triggered, which led to an intense preoccupation with the past. From the middle of the 16th century, this general thirst for knowledge also led to a great preoccupation with Hamelin's legend and the inexplicable loss of 130 children, which lasted for well over a hundred years. Now educated people began to form their own opinion of the hitherto very meagre tradition, which was mainly characterized by the few Latin, ecclesiastical records. People now listened to the people of Hamelin and what they knew about the fate of their children at the time. The previous blanket of silence was now consciously ignored. It may have been the result of collective repression, because the deeply shocking and incomprehensible event was an unresolved shock for the citizens.

In 1557, the then mayor of Bamberg, Hans Zeitlos, wrote in the chronicle of his town4 about the legend of Hamelin, as it was told to him during his involuntary stay there in 1553 when he was taken hostage during the Peasants' Wars.

Jobus Fincelius, a pastor from Pomerania, included the Hameln legend in 1556 in his collection "Wunderzeichen,Teil I" of "schröcklichen Wunderzeichen und Geschichten". He begins thus: "Of the devil's power and evil I will report here a true history. "5 The reference to the "true story" reveals his well-intentioned intention to make the reader justifiably fearful of the devil's powers of seduction, because he sees in the legend a convincing example of a journey to hell that really happened. Similar miracle reports appear several times during this period, such as the warnings against the destructive work of Satan written in Latin in 1571 by the Lüneburg Latin school rector Lucas Lossius, using the Hameln incident as an example.

This probably also includes Count Froben Christoph von Zimmern6 , who should be mentioned for his idiosyncratic expansion of the legend and who brings rats into play for the first time in his chronicle of 1565. Where he got this new element from remains unclear. It is possible that he drew his own conclusions from the depiction of rats on the stained glass windows in town houses, because it was only the motif of the piper who had been cheated of his wages that provided the actual reason for the abduction of the children.

The awakened great historical interest in the past is now reflected in numerous chronicles, because a new need to preserve historical facts and use them as a guide for future action is becoming apparent. Events such as the legend of Hamelin are gladly included in such chronicles. Some of these chroniclers therefore wanted to get a picture of the town for themselves and, in modern terms, did their research among the citizens of Hamelin, councillors and church representatives. Some of them are mentioned here: Heinrich Bünting7 in his Braunschweig-Lüneburg Chronicle of 1584 or the author of the Thuringian Chronicle Adelar Erich and the much fabulating Johannes Letzner8 in his Hildesheimische und Corbeyische Chronica. To have tracked down and collected these many traces of the saga is the merit of the Hameln grammar school principal Heinrich Spanuth, who presented the results of his extensive research into the saga in his 1951 dissertation (summa cum laude) at an advanced age.

In addition to the original reports of a child abduction, writers now increasingly included the plague of rats in their depictions of the legend. For the citizens of Hamelin and especially the town fathers, this new version of their legend, which had previously caused such a stir and been used as an example to admonish ungodly behavior, became a great nuisance. Now a dark shadow falls on the town, as the citizens and their city leaders are cast in a false light and the blame for their children's misfortune falls back on them.

In the disputes of the early 17th century, more and more new claims are made, other dates appear and the day of the event is also assigned to other saints. Finally, in 1654, the Hamelin councillor and lawyer Sebastian Spilker9 tried to dismiss the whole story as an invention of adults and parents who wanted to educate their children to obedience and the fear of God in a counter-report to the statements of the Hamelin Latin school rector Samuel Erich. Samuel Erich had cited the old rhyming prayer in the Abbey missal as proof of an actual event.10 Spilker's counter-evidence is based on the fact that the original texts no longer exist, as only copies of them still exist. This also applies to the oldest source, the rhyming prayer. For him, the silence in the Hamelin church chronicle from 1384 about the disastrous accident that occurred only a hundred years ago is conclusive proof that the "children's exodus" could not have happened. However, this could not weaken, let alone erase, the appeal of the Pied Piper legend, which has been expanded to include the rat motif and is now even more memorable.

In his "Report to Court" to the Merian publishing house in Frankfurt a. M. in 1653, Hamelin's mayor Gerhard Reiche11 also tried to influence the description of the town of Hamelin in Merian's depictions of the town by arguing that the chronicles around the time of the alleged disaster did not mention anything. Merian did not dispense with the legend, but he did dispense with the prehistory of the plague of rats.

Around the middle of the 17th century, the first stories began to appear in England. In Germany, however, the appeal of the legend faded because the unrealistic embellishments about the disappearance in the mountain and the magical nature of the piper figure were increasingly questioned. One example of this is the opinion of the great scholar Wilhelm Leibnitz12 , who in 1692 believed in a historical event as an explanation. He saw a connection at the heart of the legend to the Children's Crusades, which, however, took place much earlier in 1212.

With the onset of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, mentions of the Hamelin saga were only brief statements, as the unrealistic claims in the saga were no longer believed. Around 1750, the Hameln garrison preacher Christoph Friedrich Fein13 researched a new approach to the historical background of the abduction legend. He combines the three numbers on a memorial stone at the New Gate in such a way that the legend movesback to the year 1259 and comes close in time to the Battle of Sedemünder, in which many young men from Hamelin fell (see 2c for more details). This interpretation of the legend was considered the most likely for a very long time afterwards. Only when the Hamelin historian Otto Meinardus14 determined the exact date of the battle on July 28, 1261, did it lose its persuasive power at the beginning of the 20th century.

The final version of the tale was completed by the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm15 in 1816 and spread throughout Germany during the Romantic period. It became the subject of art. Although there were rhymed versions far earlier, it was not until Johann Wolfgang von Goethe set about writing his famous poem about the seductive Pied Piper in 1803 that the legend became the source of ever new literary works. Romanticism covered the legend with a mythological veil, in which Germanic archetypes such as rats were recognized as symbols of souls. Later in 1883, the writer Julius Wolff's verse poem "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" caused a lasting echo in the town. He was therefore awarded honorary citizenship. Hamelin even created a fountain to this poem, but it has since been lost. The sweet love story he included in the legend soon led to his work being abandoned.

Painting is now also discovering the legend. Above all, the dazzling figure of the Pied Piper with its magical effect on people, both in its demonic and its seductive effect, was appealing. Soon after Goethe's Pied Piper song, illustrations began to appear. In the first collection of German folk songs from 1806 by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano in "Des Knaben Wunderhorn", the legend is included in song form and illustrated with a pen and ink drawing. The young history painter Gustav Adolf Spangenberg painted the Pied Piper saga in an oil painting around 1860 as a cheerful procession of children. The children of various ages are being led into the forest by a piper playing the bagpipes.

Gustav Adolf Spangenberg around 1860, The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Pompous artistic adaptations of historical themes now paved the way for the emerging historicism. The heightened historical awareness led to the town of Hamelin organizing its first major festival in 1884 to commemorate the 600th anniversary of the fateful year 1284. In historical research, the archives are re-evaluated using critical methods, including those of the town archives in Hamelin and the church archives.

The new appreciation of history led to the establishment of a town museum in 1912, which included exhibits on the town's history as well as evidence of the town legend. Heinrich Spanuth, whose meticulous research uncovered many new traces of the legend, which then became the basis for newer research approaches, such as his rediscovery of the Lüneburg manuscript or the watercolor painting from 1592 in the travel chronicle of Augustin von Mörsperg, was of great merit.

At the end of the disastrous First World War at the beginning of the 20th century, the then retired Privy Councillor of Justice Freydanck from Hamelin, also an ardent researcher, interpreter and supporter of the Pied Piper legend, discovered a parchment with a dialect poem about the legend when he went to visit a farmer in the "Schaumburgischen" region to make a will. The farmer only let him make a copy of it, which has been preserved, but the original has never been found because the finder had forgotten the place and name of the farmer. Freydanck is also responsible for an oil painting that he painted about the legend. The discovery of a martial male head with a strange headdress on the inside of an old folio in the Hameln district court also goes back to him. His 1929 publication on the place names of the Hameln-Pyrmont district has caused some confusion about the legend.16

In 1934, the 650th anniversary of the legend is celebrated for the second time with a grand festival and a parade so magnificent and glamorous that it is reported on again and again. A detailed supplement17 appeared in the local newspaper with various articles on the Pied Piper saga. A treatise on the document, of which only a pencil copy exists, was very well received. The appeal to search for the original was unsuccessful (see 4b for more details). As a lasting reminder of this festival, clockworkchimes and figures about the Pied Piper were installed on the town hall, but were lost in the Second World War when the town hall was destroyed. After the war, a new set of figures and bells was installed on the gable of the Hochzeitshaus, reenacting both parts of the legend.

Now articles about the legend appear in the press and with the rise of tourism, an amateur drama is performed on Sundays in summer, an official "rat catcher" in colorful clothing leads the crowd and delights guests with his guided tours of the town. Bread rats and stuffed animal rats are the new souvenirs for tourists, picture books and coloring books for children.

In the second half of the 20th century, people from abroad also began to take an interest in and visit the town and its now world-famous legend. New research now begins. Wolfgang Wann, the Würzburg archivist18, published his theory about the whereabouts of the 130 Hameln children in 1949. He believed that the trail led to Bohemia and Moravia and that a place called Hamlikov reminded him of the town of Hameln. Together with Heinrich Spanuth's dissertation19 , the emigration theory now prevailed as an explanation for the end of the saga. At the same time, however, it is relativized again by the detailed investigations of the secondary school teacher Hans Dobbertin20 , who, through name research in Pomerania, believed in a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea near Rügenwalde, in which the young emigrants sank (more details in 2a). The emigration theory thus fits in with a current events at the time, the return of refugees from the East after the end of the WWII. Another, completely different thesis appeared in 1957 with the work of Waltraud Woeller.21 She habilitated for the chair of ethnology at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She believed she had found the location of the disappearance and suspected an accident in the Teufelsküche in the Ith near Coppenbrügge (see 2d for more details).

When the Hamelin Museum was given a full-time museum director in 1971, a long overdue, informative and aesthetically sophisticated book about the legend of the Pied Piper was produced under his leadership, which has lasting value as a beautiful memento.22 Norbert Humburg, the author of the book, initiated a scientific symposium, a narrative research conference, to mark the 700th anniversary of the legend in 1984, the results of which were published in a volume entitled "History and Stories "23 . In it, some of the participating experts shed light on individual aspects of the saga, but no new research approaches could be derived from them, except that an earlier theory in connection with the plague was given new impetus.

When a new museum was set up in Coppenbrügge Castle, which was opened in 1986, Waltraud Woeller's habilitation thesis on the legend of the Pied Piper reappeared among the extensive archive material. When the rock faces in the Ith were discovered by me a year later and the historical documents about the place mention a "Cobbanberg", just as it is called "Koppenberg" in the legend, this theory became very topical. My attempts to publish the new discoveries in the Ith and about Coppenbrügge in connection with the legend in the local newspaper met with general interest, but remained tainted with skepticism. At least the NDR showed interest in including the rock faces on the Wackelstein in the Ith and the huge boulder I had made shake in the program for its production in the series "Bilderbuch Deutschland" (Picture Book Germany), albeit with a slightly amused commentary.

In the 1990s, a lot of new things were created about the legend. On September 26, 1993, the Theater Dortmund staged the world premiere of the opera "Der Rattenfänger, ein Hamelner Totentanz". The libretto was written by Michael Ende and the music was penned by the composer Wilfried Hiller. The world-famous clarinettist Giora Feidmann was recruited to play the Pied Piper for the world premiere. In his libretto, Michael Ende transformed the saga into a highly critical work into which he projected worldwide capitalism, the global ecological crisis and its sociological and psychological roots. The poster for the premiere was created by the well-known illustrator and caricaturist Horst Haitzinger.

The apocalyptic poster by Horst Haitzinger

to the Pied Piper Opera on the program booklet

for the world premiere in Dortmund in 1993

It depicts the all-powerful, money-shitting rat king who rules the law and justice. On the floor are the ruined remains of his voracious brood and, raised high, encircled by his rat tail, the deliciously amusing representatives of the church, politics, business and sexual pleasure. This heavy fare for theater audiences was probably the reason why the work was soon removed from the repertoire.

In the years that followed, two new theories about the saga were presented. In 1995, Fanny Rostek Lühmann26 presented a completely new approach to the saga of Hamelin. Based on the fascination of the legend, she pursues an exclusively depth-psychological approach strictly according to the Freudian school (more details in 2e). In 1997, the name researcher Jürgen Udolph27 found place names from the Weserbergland in the Prignitz and Uckermark north of Berlin and believes in an emigration in connection with the Pied Piper legend, as with Wolfgang Wann and Hans Dobbertin (more details in 2a).

The 21st century begins with the worldwide cinematic marketing of the Pied Piper legend. ZDF produces a 45-minute program in which experiments with rats and flute music are shown. This clearly shows the tendency to create a scientifically sound study. The Discovery Channel in the USA and the Discovery Channel of the same name in England followed with a similar aim. The English even brought along a person who was used as a medium and who was supposed to mentally transport himself back to 1284 in the Devil's Kitchen on the Ith. In his flashback, the young man saw a prisoner being transported into slavery and held here. This was followed by a French and a Japanese TV investigation, all of whom were interested in obtaining footage of the Devil's Kitchen in the Ith in order to be able to present the possible location of the traceless disappearance ofHamelns children in their program. The responsible forester became increasingly annoyed by the continuing number of requests from film crews from all over the world, because he had to accompany and supervise the filming in the nature reserve and because he feared that the worldwide publicity could trigger an uncontrollable influx of people. This only improved when filming in the forest became subject to a fee for foreign film crews.

In 2016, Stephan Joost, a psychiatrist28 and forensic scientist from Giessen, introduced an interesting new approach to clarifying the historical background of the Pied Piper legend. He examines the statements in the legend sources for their credibility using forensic methods and establishes that the most distant sources in terms of time and place are the most credible. The ecclesiastical texts from Hamelin come off particularly badly. He wants to shed more light on and question the role of the church in the legendary events of the time. We anxiously await the results.

b. Dealing with the sources

In order to understand how the many different legend researchers have dealt with the surviving documents, it is necessary to examine the background, the reason for the burning interest in solving the still unsolved criminal case from the Middle Ages.

Among the representatives of colonization theories (Hannibal Nullejus, to New Saxony, Transylvania 1589; Wolfgang Wann, to Bohemia/Moravia 1949; Heinrich Spanuth, not specified 1951; Hans Dobbertin, Pomerania 1955; Jürgen Udolph, Prignitz/Uckermark 1997), there are two main driving characteristics behind the supposed gain in knowledge about the saga. All are based on historically verified events of emigration to new settlement areas. This alone would not be enough to establish a convincing connection with the saga. But their second argumentative pillar, the language, cannot establish this connection to the legend either. By transferring place and family names to the new homeland, they believed they had discovered a hot trace of Hameln descendants. This applies above all to Prignitz and Uckermark, where, for example, the family name Spiegelberg and even a place name Spiegelberg can often be found.29 The genealogical tracing of this name back to the time of eastern colonization in the 13th century actually leads to the Counts of Spiegelberg from the Weserbergland. They had founded their county in Coppenbrügge in 1281.

Because the story is based exclusively on the children being led away, all other elements in the legend have to be bent or reinterpreted. This may lead to new discoveries about the history of the colonization migration, but the connection to the legend remains an arbitrary construction. This then leads to completely unnecessary arguments between the aforementioned representatives, as can be seen in newspaper articles in the local press from the 1960s and 1970s. Is it possible, is it permissible, to work scientifically in this way?

Another group of legend experts believe that the story did not really happen. For them, it is a fiction, but for a specific purpose: Councillor Sebastian Spilker, 1654; Fanny Rostek Lühmann, 1995; and all people who think the saga is an invented legend. Most people suspect an educational purpose behind the legend. However, there are also people who assume that it has an advertising purpose for the town. Fanny Rostek Lühmann, who is looking for the origin of the legend's fascination with generations of people that has lasted for centuries, suspects a psychological purpose.30 How do all these people come to the conclusion that the legend is not based on historical events? It is striking how precisely these people know and have studied the sources. They are offended by the fact that no originals of the oldest records exist, only copies of them. These copies are rejected with scientific acumen because of possible falsifications and manipulations. Is it permissible to dismiss these lightly?

The supporters of the Battle of Sedemünder (Christoph Friedrich Fein, 1749; W. Streitberg, 1899; General von Poten, 1934) have derived their theory from the transposition of dates on the memorial stone or from scathing criticism of the authors of the source texts. It is surprising how generously some statements are made about the legend and how little is contradicted. It is striking how little effort the critics make to gain an appropriate understanding of the period and the prevailing world view of the time. This is why such statements come across as arrogant and haughty.

Two representatives of a local dance rage theory should be mentioned here: Johann Letzner, 1590; Otto Meinardus, 1882, for whom the minstrel with his music and the date around the time of the summer solstice on June 26 are the cause of the legendary event. The two researchers, the first through his passion for collecting chronicles and the second through his extensive knowledge of the Hamelin archives, refer to the outbreaks of dance frenzy that have been handed down from the Middle Ages, which overcame a large group of people like an addictive, inexplicable obsession that escalated into frenzy. This was triggered by feast days and minstrels who could heat people up with their music. This event in Hamelin led to the creation of the legend. Neither of them raises any further questions about the whereabouts of the lost children.

Representatives of a local event as the cause of the Pied Piper legend include: Waltraud Woeller 1956; Bernd Ulrich Hucker 1984 and myself 1990. How can these authors' treatment of the sources be evaluated? Waltraud Woeller's31 main motive for her research approach is the term "Koppen", as it appears in the more bourgeois legend texts. She wanted to search for this distinctive place name within a radius of 15 kilometers around Hameln and came across Coppenbrügge (spelled "Koppenbrügge" before 1934). She assumed the 15-kilometer distance around Hamelin because a similar dance legend exists in Thuringia from the same century, in which young people danced from Erfurt to Arnstadt, but remained alive.

Bernd Ulrich Hucker32 has studied the traditional popular rhyming verses of the saga, which he calls "mnemonic verses". He is concerned with their function for the memory and preservation of an event of grave importance described in them. He sees the rhyming form as a means of protecting the information to be preserved from falsification through the fixed form of rhyme and meter and at the same time achieving better memorability. He believes he can infer a localized event behind the legend from these traditions because they only exist in a limited local environment and do not refer to historically proven events.

The decisive factor in my own approach to the legend was that I only wanted to consider the oldest sources in order to exclude later miraculous additions and embellishments. However, this re-evaluation of the old texts could only succeed with the help of other sciences. These include art history, church history, local history, geology, etymology, archaeology and even psychology. From the very beginning, the aim of my research33 was not to alter the events in the legend under any circumstances, but to substantiate the facts in the legend exclusively with facts from today's reality and make them verifiable. The truthfulness of the saga must also be examined.

The actual trigger for my interest in the Hameln legend was the discovery of faces on the rocky cliffs in the Ith above Coppenbrügge in the fall of 1987. The so-called "Denkmal aus dem Heidenthum", which the Coppenbrügge pastor Jacobi 34 had already searched for in vain in 1771, was rediscovered and the mountain name "Cobbanberg" (Koppenberg) from the year 1013 for the Ith near Coppenbrügge is proof of the existence of these rock heads. The settlement at the foot of the mountain adopted the name and has retained it to this day as "Coppenbrügge". For me, this gave Waltraud Woeller's theory a new boost, albeit in a different direction, in which a religious conflict comes into focus.

c. Science as an approach to the truth

At the beginning of my elaboration on the legendary material, I would like to say what constitutes a scientific approach for me. I am well aware of the skeptical remarks and quick rejections, especially from scientific circles, when it comes to observations that do not fit neatly into the existing world view. This refers to the recognition of the discovery of faces on the rocky cliffs on the Ith, but also in other places such as the Externsteine or the Bruchhäuser Steinen in the Sauerland and many other places throughout Europe. Elisabeth Neumann-Gundrum is responsible for the research on these sites. She presented her findings in an illustrated book entitled "Europe's Culture of Large Sculptures" in 1981.35 In 1988, she was granted permission to hold an exhibition at the Lippisches Landesmuseum in Detmold featuring the rocks she had photographed at the Externsteine. After her remarks at the opening of the exhibition, the then head curator from Bielefeld accused her of "intellectual superstructure" in public, which he could not "believe", dismissing her work as fantasy.36

If you search for her name on the Internet, you will find the following on Wikipedia37: "This interpretation, which has only fallen on fertile ground in right-wing and Germanophile circles, is consistently rejected by scholars and the corresponding 'research' is considered pseudoscience." Under the section "Criticism" it is stated: "On the part of academic science, the rock formations in question are considered to be of purely natural origin and the similarities with faces or animals are unanimously regarded as natural coincidences. An unbiased look at the photos in Neumann-Gundrum's illustrated book shows that their interpretation is hardly comprehensible." However, the picture material attached to Wikipedia is completely unsuitable because it does not allow the reader to convince himself of the claimed "barely comprehensible" interpretation.

That is why I have chosen an example from the book on "Traces of work on large megalithic stone sculptures": the caller at the Externsteine.

The illustration by tracing

depictions on the Ruferfelsen near the

Externsteine, as Elisabeth

Neumann-Gundrum has developed

Anyone who does not avoid a comparative examination of the photo and the drawing from the outset will be unable to avoid registering the honesty between the two representations and recognizing their congruence. Where is something "incomprehensible" here? Yes, it is strikingly unusual because we are not normally used to looking so closely. But that is precisely what makes science so special, that it does not avoid the new unknown, but rather continues to delve deeper into the matter "without bias" and out of pure curiosity, i.e. stays even more intensively with the matter. But this is exactly what Ms. Neumann-Gundrum did, as can be seen from the detailed photo of the Rufer head. She has even produced a supplement with removable transparent paper on which the drawings of the rocks are printed, specifically for the doubters. This means that even skeptics can easily check the identity themselves by placing the transparent drawing over the respective photo.

With these details (the lizard in the

lower part of the face) the

recognition is difficult, but can be

honest comparison cannot be denied

Verifiability is the basis of real science. I admit that when I first encountered these pictures and drawings, I too found it difficult not to immediately dismiss what I "saw" as pure fantasy, as many "academic scientists" rashly do. The easy way out is then to claim that everything is merely the result of natural weathering. During a guided tour of the museum in Coppenbrügge, I have even heard a bright primary school pupil say skeptically when looking at the rock faces, "but that takes a lot of imagination". If imagination means a strong power of imagination coupled with intuition or, as Konrad Lorenz describes, that he relies on the human ability to perceive shapes as a scientific source for his animal observations, then there is nothing wrong with that. But if fantasy is meant in the sense of fantasy, i.e. as a pure figment of the imagination without any real reference, then of course it has nothing to do with science.

In order to expose the topic of large stone sculptures as pseudo-scientific, Wikipedia clearly states the political classification in the next paragraph: "The controversial theses found a certain acceptance in esoteric circles of the extreme right-wing scene, to which the majority of authors who have dealt with the topic of large stone sculptures can also be assigned." This attribution to the extreme right-wing scene has the effect of a taboo in German society. And that is how it is supposed to work, because even the media only take up the highly interesting topic of rock faces as a sideline to other topics, such as in programs about the Pied Piper saga.

If we assume that these pictorial motifs on the rocks correspond to the drawings and that this is what really makes them visible, the question of their meaning and significance cannot be ignored. Ms. Neumann-Gundrum has highlighted two of the recurring motifs on the rock faces: the "breath birth", because smaller human or animal heads emerge from the mouth and nose of the large faces, and the "two-face", because the eyes are shaped differently. Wikipedia describes her interpretation of these motifs as "steeped in difficult-to-understand mysticism". However, this is not due to her mysterious world of thought, but rather to her language style, which is so convoluted with constant insertions and subordinate clauses that it makes it unnecessarily difficult for the reader to understand her explanations. However, we will not go into these interpretations in detail here (see 5c for more information).

Something fundamental needs to be said here on the subject of science and truth. Science that does not seek knowledge, truth, is not science. If it "creates" new knowledge, it needs an open and honest attitude towards the research objective. Human vanity such as scholarly conceit, dogmatism, rivalry or even grandstanding hinder pure science. In 1959, Konrad Lorenz38 , the pioneering animal behavior researcher, published a treatise on the development of scientifically gained knowledge on the subject of shape perception, in which he addresses the fundamental importance of this human ability in all research. In his introduction he writes: "All our knowledge of the laws of the reality that surrounds us is based on the reports of that wonderful, but quite well researchable neural apparatus that forms perceptions from sensory data. Without it, but above all without the literally objectifying performance of the so-called constancy mechanisms, which we will discuss in more detail, we would know nothing of the existence over shorter or longer periods of time of those natural units that we call objects. "39 Today, Konrad Lorenz is regarded as the "Einstein of biology".

The term "truth" also requires a more precise definition. In the dictionary, truth is "the correspondence of knowledge with its object. "40 However, if new insights and findings emerge through closer examination of the object, the previous truth about the real object is relativized. Truth is therefore never absolute, but our perception and the "truth" gained from it remains provisional. Research into new phenomena in the real environment therefore always remains in the realm of hypotheses, which, however, through further research lead to new hypotheses that explain the facts more coherently than the previous ones. This is the scientific approach by which the previous world view, the reality considered to be true, is changed, corrected and expanded. What is true has an important species-preserving function for the perceiving individual through the constancy of direction, color and form.

However, there are also perceptual illusions, including the well-known "optical illusion" or eidetic ability in many people. We speak of eidetic inner images when someone recognizes shapes in cloud formations or in natural structures in stones or other materials that their own perceptual apparatus produces, but which come about purely by chance. This is where the "academic scientists'" criticism of Ms. Neumann-Gundrum's research comes in. She has made her observations of the rocks she studied verifiable for all and sundry through her photographs and the resulting drawings. However, this thorough verification has so far been refused by the scientific community because everything is hastily attributed to natural weathering. Is this perhaps a scientific method designed to ward off supposed false reports? History is full of examples that show how difficult the heads of the existing world view find it when new phenomena appear and new discoveries are made. This was already the case in Galileo's time, with Giordano Bruno or with the discovery of cave paintings, so that their recognition was initially refused.

A second example, which has attracted worldwide attention for several decades, is argued in exactly the opposite way. When beautiful crop circles appear in the almost ripe fields in England in summer, believers in science claim that these circles are man-made and not made by nature. Is this again purely defensive behavior in order not to endanger the existing world view or do people simply not believe that nature has such an ability? Valid counter-arguments are not even heard, such as the fact that the increasingly differentiated circles are always created during the short summer nights, without artificial light and without any recognizable missteps by people working in the dark. In order to mark out and precisely measure such complicated geometric figures, a larger group would be needed, which would have to communicate completely silently over a greater distance. Otherwise, these actions would have long since been uncovered and made public, either by the farmers or other nocturnal passers-by. It seems almost embarrassing that two pensioners should be responsible for this. Why is such an implausible explanation given so quickly and why is this interesting new phenomenon, similar to the rock faces, withheld from open scientific research?

Large crop circle in the southern English county of Wildshire,

whose complicated system resembles a magnetic field. To the

Size comparison shows people standing in a circle.

The picture is of fascinating beauty and

characterized by incredible precision. It is difficult to explain its origins

by human hand/foot, and that with

at most five hours of darkness and not a single

recognizable misstep in around 450 segments.41

In an article in the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT on September 12, 2002 entitled "Extraterrestrials in the cornfield" by Christoph Drösser42 , the phenomenon of crop circles is demystified, as he names the alleged "crop circle artists"