In his book “Instructions for use for Lower Bavaria” (Piper, 2006), the journalist Teja Fiedler devoted an entire chapter to the sensitivities of his home town of Plattling. Of course, it’s about the footballers of the game association, who stood before jumping into the professional league for many years, but are now struggling in the lowlands of the district league. Gone are the glorious times of sand track drivers, back then, when the local hero Maxreiter (called Maxe) against the terror of the sand tracks, the Abensberger Gunzenhauser (Gunze), lay down in the curves in front of thousands of feverish fans and stirred up the most violent emotions.
Football, dirt track, Isar flickering, everything is wonderful, but the greatest Plattling sensation is undoubtedly the Nibelungenlied, no matter how funny it may sound at first sight. In fact, Plattling is one of the great places in German literature, which is being expressed juicily again these days. Because the city is right in the middle of its Nibelungen Festival, which recalls the glorious past every four years.
“There at Pledelingen they were given peace, the people everywhere rode up to them. They gave what they needed willingly and happily, they took it with honor, and this was soon done elsewhere.” These lines about Plattling (Pledelingen) can actually be read in the Nibelungenlied, the greatest medieval heroic epic of all. Although Hagen did not assassinate Siegfried in Plattling, but somewhere in the Odenwald, the unknown author of the Nibelungenlied describes Plattling around the year 1200 as the center of the Nibelungen procession, which led from Worms to Esztergom in Hungary. Accordingly, the people of Plattling welcomed Kriemhild, one of the main characters of the story, with hospitality.
Every four years, the Plattling Festival Association interprets the meeting between Kriemhild and her uncle, Bishop Pilgrim von Passau, which the poet constructed, all the more enthusiastically. In the stage play, he travels to meet his niece. In Plattling he tries in vain to dissuade her from continuing her fateful journey. Kriemhild, in mourning over the murder of her husband Siegfried, wants to marry the Hun Attila and take revenge on Hagen and the Nibelungen together with him. So she travels with her entourage via Plattling to the land of the Huns.
Happened in Plattling: Bishop Pilgrim (Peter Mader) talks Kriemhild (Renate Kinkel) into his conscience.
(Photo: Manfred Pichler)
“Kriemhild’s retribution” is the title of the play that the authors Josef Berlinger and Eva Sixt wrote for the people of Plattling based on the Nibelungen saga. They chose 45 actors to play 80 roles in the two-and-a-half-hour play. After the action-packed premiere at the weekend, the audience was consistently enthusiastic.
“The people of Plattling have known the Nibelungen saga from an early age,” says Kathrin Tost, head of the cultural office. Berlinger and Sixt seasoned the piece with a lot of local colour, which is not least expressed in the actors’ rubber boots, since the people of Plattling are a people plagued by water. “Of course we fantasized about it,” says Eva Sixt, but it was great fun, which is why the first part turned into a kind of dialectal comedy, along the lines of: Something’s stirring in Plattling. But because the story is a tragedy, at least the second part is quite scary.
Other places in Bavaria are also closely linked to the Nibelungen saga. A good 450 years ago, the chronicler Wigulaeus Hundt discovered one of the oldest manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied in the archives of Prunn Castle (Kelheim district). The copy kept in the State Library was made around 1330 and is part of the UNESCO World Document Heritage.
The Pförring market, which nestles comfortably in the Donauauen, is also mentioned in the Nibelungenlied. The farm of the ferryman who was killed by Hagen von Tronje because he didn’t want to put the Nibelung across the Danube is said to have been in this Hallertau area.
Kriemhild’s retribution, Magdalenenplatz in Plattling: Thursday, Friday and Saturday (9 p.m. each time, tickets: https://plattling.fairetickets.de). The medieval Nibelungenmarkt, which lasts until Sunday, also begins on the town square on Thursday. Info: nibelungenfestspiele.com.