Research On The Relation Of "Nibelungenlied" And The Folk Psychology Of German Nation

The medieval heroic epic The Nibelungen Song, regarded as an "encyclopedia"of the German nation, has provided an efficient way for our understanding ofGermany. The Nibelungen Song researches have gone through three phases since itsrediscovery in the18th century: comparative studies, functionization studies andpluralistic studies. The Nibelungen Song researches involving folk psychology arescattered among those developed from some other perspectives, and there are fewspecialized studies on the folk psychology in The Nibelungen Song in a systematicand comprehensive way so far.Folk psychology is broad in connotation, and The Nibelungen Song conveys fourrelated aspects: death consciousness, religious consciousness, security needs, andgender roles. In The Nibelungen Song, the death consciousness lies in its aestheticvalue and the value orientation. Death aesthetics works on the surface ofconsciousness while it is rooted in the death’s value orientation, both of which aretargeted towards the fear of death and how to conquer death. The aesthetic value ofdeath in the epic is based on two value orientations of death in German nation:"lovelife, love death" and "love death, hate life”. The Nibelungen Song covers almost thewhole process of German people’s religious development. Devils, heroes, PersonalGod and Super-personal God witness German people’s worship on substance, worshipon heroes, and worship on deities. An analyze of the objects of worship, religioussentiments and religion’s social function may come to a fact that this epic reflects thestatus of religious worship and religious consciousness of the German nation in itsinfancy, and that the religious influence, no matter the ancient German religion orChristian, is relatively weak at that time. The security needs in the German people’scollective unconscious are extremely strong. Concerning natural conditions, ethnicrelations and the inner spirit, Germans suffer harsher afflictions than any other nations,and the security needs for the above three respects have been severely suppressed,resulting in German people’s strong sense of insecurity. The studies of gender roles inThe Nibelungen Song should be undertaken in the German cultural background andthe nation’s culture-psychological context. In the early middle ages, men’s role ofbeing warriors made people believe that men were naturally stronger than women inboth body and mind. Therefore, men were inclined to play tool-oriented roles characteristic of being more active, adventurous, and powerful, while women wereideographically oriented to be more passive, stable and gentle. Men in TheNibelungen Song pursued value of a knight life in the course of making achievements,while women sought the meaning of existence in the course of following men.Based on the above analysis, the conclusions are as follows: First, TheNibelungen Song is a self-portrait of the German nation in its infancy. The differencesin the national consciousness between The Nibelungen Song and the other medievalepics are largely caused by the lack of national identity. Second, The Nibelungen Songis a product of social transition. The epic is a witness of Germany’s transition fromprimitive society to feudal society, recording German people’s transition from theancient Germanic people to modern German. Therefore, the coexistence of theinheritance of Nordic tradition and the acceptance of foreign culture is explicit, astheir contradictions and conflicts are implicit. But the implicit force is potential withstrong continuity. Third, The Nibelungen Song reflects two important infrastructures:Nordic culture and Christian culture, which construct the folk psychology of theGerman nation. Stimulation from Nordic culture develops an important distinctionbetween European civilization after the middle ages and ancient European civilization.Influences from Ancient Greek and Roman culture are relatively weak, which help todistinguish the German nation and culture from those of the other contemporaryEuropean nations.In short, The Nibelungen Song, defined by the national history and German spiritand projecting the German nation’s psychology, has exerted a subtle influence on theformation and development of its national character, thus making a significant impacton the historical process of Germany.