Abstract:
This study analyzes the scholarly and literary reception of the Old English "Beowulf" epic in Germany from the first translations in the first half of the 19th century, through the Weimar Republic and Third Reich to the first years of the 21st century. It examines prose adaptations by, e. g., Therese Dahn (1888), Theodor Seidenfaden (1930 and 1938), Hans Friedrich Blunck (1938), Severin Rüttgers (1940), adaptations for the stage, e. g., by Hermann Griebel (1924), Otto Bruder (1927), and Fritz Diettrich (1939/1940), and the "Beowulf"-inspired novel "Hakons Lied" by Gisela Reichel (1962). A short excursus provides information about film adaptations of "Beowulf".
The study shows how "Beowulf" is read, reconceptualized, and ideologized in the contexts of the times and how themes, motifs and ideologemes are inscribed into the texts, e. g. those of the hero and prophet, Germanic belief in fate and mission, the Führer, the king in the mountain, salvation (in a political or religious sense), but also the idea of self-discovery and self-assertion under the Nazi or GDR regimes.