In the second, or Middle High German Period, the heroic legends of early times were revived and formed the subject matter of many epic and semi epic poems. These legends have been classified into six several cycles of romances:[1]
[1] Cf. Morley's "English Writers." Vol. III., pp. 152-4.
1. The Frankish cycle contains the stories of Siegfried, the Sigurd of the Scandinavian tradition.
2. The Burgundian cycle contains King Gunther.
3. The Ostrogoth cycle contains Dietrich, Theodoric, and Hildebrand.
4. The Hungarian cycle, to which belongs Attila or Etzel, and Rudiger.
5. The Lombard cycle, to which belong King Rother, King Otnit, and Wolfdietrich.
6. The North Saxon cycle, to which belongs the tale of Gudrun. The two most important of all the epics based upon these cycles are the Gudrun and the Niebelungenlied. The latter is the more comprehensive, national, and famous. It includes and unifies all the tales from the first four cycles of heroic legends.[1] The whole of German art, literature, and tradition is full of reflections of this poem. The best scholarship has concluded that the poem is not the work of a single author, but, like other folk epics, an edited collection of songs. The work was finished about 1190-1210. It consists of two greater parts, (1) the "Death of Siegfried" and (2) the "Vengeance of Kriemhild".
[1] See Kluge, "Geschichte der Deutschen National-Literature," p. 33.
From the "Niebelungenlied". The first song in the poem gives us
Kriemhild's foreboding dream.