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Exodus or Exitus? Reflections on the Pied Piper on Visiting Hamelin and Coppenbrgge
The Grimm brothers and Robert Browning have doubtless done more than anyone else to make the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin or "der Rattenfnger von Hameln" one of the most celebrated legends in the world. In case any reader has forgotten or perhaps never learned. the details of the popular account of the story, I venture to summerize it as follows:
Once the town of Hamelin near Hannover was afflicted by a terrible plague of rats against which no conventional means of extermination availed. During this time a piper dressed in a garb of many colours claimed that he could rid the town of this plague, in return for a financial consideration, of course. The mayor of the town agreed to this offer, whereapon the piper produced a melody on his flute which made all the rats follow him to the river Weser, where they drowned. However, the ungrateful elders of Hamelin refused to pay the piper the agreed sum. Later he played his instrument to a different tune and this time it was the children of Hamelin who followed him. He led them away to a hill where he and the children disappeared into a mysterious cavern and none of them - with the exception of a lame boy and possibly a blind one too - was ever seen again in Hamelin, though it was rumoured that a people with vague memories of Hamelin settled in Romania or another place in eastern Europe.
As a recent visitor to Hamelin I can well attest that the town is still very much indebted to the Piper. Though the town is certainly worth a visit on the strength of its impressive architecture, typically adorned with ornate Renaissance facades, and of its pleasant natural setting, it could never have attracted such droves of tourists as it does from the Far East, America, not to mention families from all over Germany and Europe. Many shops offer a vast array of piedpiperabelia from ratlike figurines made of hardened bread to rat-suits comparable in size to Micky Mouse in Disney Land. In an unguarded moment I ordered a bottle of beer that cost 3.20 Euro against 1.80 in my home village. The town authorities, by the way, were not always so smitten by the town's association with the Piper, for they did not encourage the famous author Merian to include the story about the bad faith of an earlier mayor in his traveller's guide to noteworthy places. During the summer period (May to September) the town stages two public performances to commemorate the Pied Piper. Every Sunday the story is dramatized on a platform in the town's main square and it is here also that every Wednesday afternoon in the summer season the public enjoys performances of a musical - entitled - appropriately enough - "Rats".
While the play keeps reasonably close to the traditional story of the ratcatcher presented in the folktales recorded by the Grimm brothers, the musical betrays the strong influence of Robert Browning's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" introducing into the story a fable in which one surviving rat escapes to Ratland and gives a glowing account of the glorious consumerist paradise that the Piper's music has conjured up in his mind. In the musical the rats are endowed with the ability to speak and the sing. The satirical element implicit in Browning's poem is enhanced by the figure of the rat king, who strikes a bargain with the equally rapacious mayor of Hamelin. The story is suitably updated by references to the "drug"-like effect of the Piper's music, his "hippy" appearance and the bankrupt town's empty coffers. The music ranges from romantically evocative melodies to rousing tunes somewhat reminiscent of the "Marching through Georgia" song of the American Civil War.
This musical is yet one further eloquent testimony to the adaptability of the basic story as one ever able to convey an important message to the contemporary age without losing its essential matrix of associations. It is timely to recall what the earliest known account of the story was. This is to be read on the words inscribed on a beam of wood visible (to those willing to crane their necks) on the right side of the so-called "Rattenfngerhaus" standing next to the place where the east gate of medieval Hamelin used to be. The name of the lane flanking the wall translates into English as the lane without drums, the very street where even today music and dancing are forbidden in remembrance of the lost children of Hamelin. The very short account written in low German may be translated as follows:
On the 26th of June in 1284 on the day of John and Paul a piper dressed in many colours led away 130 children born in Hamelin to Koppen by Calvary, where they were lost.
First obvious point about this account is its noninclusion of any mention of rats. What, no rats! The first account in which the original story merges with the tale of a ratcatcher cheated of his pay dates from the mid sixteenth century. By this stage the Piper had become well and truly demonized. The first version is, for sure, darkly ambiguous with its ominous implication that an ill fate befell the children of Hamelin, as it states that they were finally "lost". But in what sense? - Lost to the town, lost like sailors at sea or lost in theological terms? Writers in the 16th and 17th centuries placed the most severely negative construction on the story by identifying the Piper with the devil. However, it is interesting to note that the date of the Piper's final appearance was given as the festival of Mary Magdalene (the 22nd of July) about "two hundred years ago" (i.e. in the latter half of the fourteenth century) in a Latin version of the story, the same date quoted by Browning in his poem about the Pied Piper. Both this and the earliest account of the tale connect the exodus of Hamelin's children with a saint's day, and in line with this precedent Prosper Merime makes the story an omen of the massacre of Protestants on Saint Bartholomew's day, the 23rd of August, in his novel "Chronique du Regne de Charles IX". These datings seems to reflect an ambivalence associating the demonic and sacred, which a scholar Gernot Hsam, cited below, interprets as the attempt of the Church to combat paganism by blotting out the memory of pre-Christian practices and cultic sites by giving them a Christian nomenclature. By the same token, the negative constructions placed on the Piper could be readily inverted by later authors.
Browning's reinterpretation of the Piper as the risen Christ, the Unconquered Sun, accords with the impied connection with Mary Magdalene, in the gospels the first witness of the Resurrection. Similarly, "Calvary, associated in medieval times with the skull of death swallowing sinners through the mouth of hell, becomes the Calvary of the New Testament in Browning's poem (click site of Iacov Levi below)
In keeping with its power to absorb new narrative elements that in turn reflect major historical developments, the rats recall the Black Death and all its havoc and terrors. The Piper associated with the rats also conveys something of the hysteria of an age obsessively fearful of witches, heretics and outsiders in general. Stories about a man who removes vermin from a town by some magical means are in fact quite widespread throughout Europe and farther afield, but to intertwine the original tale with an account concerning a ratcatcher required some fiction or device, clearly in this case, the unkept bargain between Piper and the authorities of Hamelin, an invention which in turn most probably reflected the concern of people in the mid-sixteenth century with matters concerning money, contracts and the payment of wages. It seems likely that the revamped story expresses deep misgivings concerning the rise of a new wage-earning class that attended the emergence of money-based non-feudal capitalism and unrest, particularly among the peasant population. The dissatisfied classes had open ears to those challenging medieval Catholicism such as Wicliffe and Luther and Mntzer. I raise this question again at the close of this report. The negative consructions placed on the story continue in interpretations according to which the parents of the town were in church when their children were led away, implying that the children under the Piper's influence became apostates from the Church. An explanation of the origin of the Piper story to which I shall later refer could well account for such a negative conclusion.
From the Romantic period onwards writers and musicians managed to rehabilitate the Piper, for the devil figure of medieval times became introverted so as to epitomize none less than Jesus Christ. As already noted, in Browning's poem this identification is at least implicit from a close reading of its text, for a constrast of good and evil emerges from a bifurcation in the way the main players in the story are presented. The greedy rats and adults on one side stand against and the innocent and righteous Piper and children on the other. The Piper becomes the Great Unrecognized. As noted above, the noted psychologist Iakov Levi unreservedly identifies Piper with Christ, evidently on the basis of noting the words found in Browning's poem (see website address below).
A question arises. What are the secret ingredients of success in the original story? Is it in any case necessary to try to unravel origins of tale in terms of some historical event? - Nobody, not even poets like Goethe and Browning, have solved the riddle - but these poets were still able to interpret it in a new and significant light. However, a discussion of its origins may help us to better understand why the story has gained such vast and apparently contradictory ramifications.
I return to the Hamelin I find today. I visited the town archives during my recent visit. The most exhaustive collection of early accounts of the Pied Pied piper story I found were cited in a work by one Herr Hans Dobbertin, who supported the still most widely held view among scholars that the origin of story lies in some migration from Hamelin to places in eastern Europe, probably under the direction of a count from a neighbouring settlement, Nicholaus of Spiegelberg, in 1284. Dobbertin cites place names in Brandenburg and elsewhere comprising the word 'Coppen'. I then vaguely remembered seeing signpost in Hamelin giving the direction to Coppenbrgge, only nine miles or so down the road and leading in an easterly direction.
In the early evening I took a train to Coppenbrgge, recklessly trusting that the town or village offered a place to stay for the night. As I approached the town the silhouette of a high wooded hill loomed behind the surrounding fields. Luckily I was able to book a room at the town's only hotel. I mentioned to a gentleman in his fifties, the sole customer at the bar, something about my interest in the legend of the Pied Piper. At this point his hitherto dull eyes flared up and seemed to glint with a strange inner fire. He assured me that the Koppen mentioned in the legend was none other than the dark mountain I had just seen. To justify this claim he produced a book about town and its history. Without the least need to ply through its pages I opened it at the place where it revealed pictures of eerie headlike rocky outcrops. It transpired that these had been carved by human hand in megalithic times, about eight thousand years ago. He went on to affirm that the Calvary referred to in the original versions of the Pied Piper story was located at what is now the site of a gravel pit, the very one that I would have seen as the train approached Coppenbrgge. It had been a place of execution, the grim scene of gallows.
The heights of the Koppenberg, now the Ithberg, he explained, were adopted by German tribes as sacred sites - hence a reference "Woden heads" in an old folksong. The Devil's Kitchen ("Teufelskche") near summit of the Ithberg is a level basin-like structure scooped in the rocks and full of boulders strewn around as though shaken by the Deel himself. This was reportedly the site of human sacrifices or at least occult events in the past, some of them even after the introduction of Christianity. Norbert, the gentleman I referred to, is convinced that Count Nikolaus of Spiegelberg with the help of his two younger brothers, in order to get into the good books of the Church and civil dignitaries, organized a massacre of youthful miscreants execrated as dancing devil-worshippers who allegedly performed forbidden rites on the Koppenberg. In much the same temper of mind Charlemagne had had thousands of heathen Saxons slaughted in the eighth century. But Christianisation was a slow process in parts of Germany - the Brocken (in the Harz mountains) and Luneburger Heath have harboured nature worshippers and their doings until recent times - perhaps even into them. The oldest church in Hamelin is dedicated to Saint Boniface, the Anglo-Saxon monk who greatly contributed to the Christianization of German tribes in the ninth century. As to Count Spiegelberg, he disappeared from historical records only weeks after the 26th of June, his last location being Stettin on the east German border. According to which theory you choose, he was either about to embark on an ill-fated voyage in the Baltic and drown with his youthful followers or he was on the run after instigating a bloodbath. the first pictorial representation of the Pied piper story provides evidence supporting the explanation of events put forward by Norbert. The painting by Augustin von Mrsperg from Alsace done in the year 1592 evidently consolidates a good amount of local research. The three hinds shown in this picture represent the coat of arms of the Spiegelberg line. "Calvary" is marked by the gallows drawn near the top of the Koppenberg, above which is a cavelike opening in the rocks, most probably the "Devil's Cauldron" or "Teufelskche".
Now the readiness of medieval narrators of the Piper legend to identify the Piper with the devil becomes understandable. Prosper Merime in his Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX makes the telling of the story an omen of the infamous massacre of Huguenots on another saints' day, on St Bartholomew's Eve in 1572. The more zealous and intolerant defenders of the Church indeed saw little difference between heathens and "heretics". Norbert's account of these matters was to a great extent confirmed by the director of Coppenbrgge's museum, Herr Gernot Hsam, whom I briefly met on the following morning. His thesis is lucidly and cogently set forth in his brochure entitled "Der Koppen" (which may be bought at Coppenbrgge's museum). He states that the Koppen referred to in the earliest version of the Pied piper legend is indeed the hill now known as the Ithberg, formerly as the Koppenberg noted in sources dating from the 11th century. The etymology of the name may mean "head", which is interesting in view of the ancient sculptures atop the Ithberg, or alternatively it may be derived from the word "cupa", a cup or grail, itself possibly alluding to the Teufelskche and its scooped-out formation and dark associations with cultic practices. Heads of the kind found on the Ithberg have been discovered throughout Europe and catalogued by Dr Elisabeth Neumann-Gundrum. Typical of these is the appearance of a blind or vacant eye signifying inner vision. They also show the faces of humans and animals emerging from the mouth or head of a larger figure. They exhibit what appears to be astral signs including the hexagram. This fact has led to speculations that the Ithberg and similar sites once served as observatories or astral computers like Stonehenge. It is notable that the sun appears at the crest of the Ith when viewed from Hamelin on March the 21st (at the vernal equinox)and the Ithberg lies due east of Hamelin. The Piper story is set just after summer solstice. Could the motley colours of the Piper betoken an element of solar mythology as well as harbour a reference to the highly suspect wandering piper or jester? Did Browning intuit this, as his poem contains significant references to the sun and its apparent movements? As Gernot Husm argues, why search for the Koppen in Brandenburg or some other far-flung location when the Koppen stares Hamelin in the face, after a manner of speaking, a bare twelve kilometers down the road (i.e. within an easy walking distance for children) on the very road, the Oster Street, down which the Piper,according to tradition, led the children of Hamelin after passing under the East Gate? Why indeed? -
P.S. Coppenbrgge has another claim - for its castle lies at a fulcrum of history. Peter the Great on his famous incognito trip that took him to Amsterdam and London stayed there one memorable night in the August of 1697.Though shy at first, he made a deep impression on the German ladies he danced with, though he was first surprised by their apparent boniness, that is until he became acquainted with the structure of the then much-worn corset. He is also thought to have engaged in secret diplomacy with Sophia, the ruler of Hanover and her son, the future George I of Great Britain and all this under the famed Peterlinde (linden tree) that still stands on the knoll above the castle.
After leaving the Hamelin area I stayed a few days in Han(n)over. For some time the kings of Great Britain were also the kings of Hanover, in fact from 1714 until the accession of Queen Victoria to the British throne in 1837. When I visited a branch of my bank I was pleasantly surprised on finding an exhibition of medieval coins with information about the history of minting. The right to mint coints was acquired by a considerable number of towns, including Hanover and later even Hamelin. The history of minting reflected the transition of Europe from a feudal to a money-based capitalist system. This transition had its teething problems due to a tendency to debase the coinage by melting down imported coins and replacing them by those of inferior quality. The production of coins also entailed acts of embezzlement and pilfering. Thus it was that apprentices in the minting trade wore colourful attire and bells on their caps rather like jesters (or the Pied Piper for that matter!) to lessen the danger that they would raid the till. It struck me afterwards that money and coinage played a role of the Pied Piper story once it integrated the motifs of the rats and the denial of his promised fee. Could those who represented the Piper as the devil have it both ways? The major and corporation denied him a wage agreed by verbal contract. Even deals made with the devil are binding. But there is no hint in the story that the major and corporation willingly entered into a pact with the devil. They simply reneged on a wage agreement, and in so doing broke some of the most solemn injunctions in the Bible. The gospels tell of the strict procedures that God expected to be followed in matters of wage payment including a stipulation that a day's wage should be paid in the evening of the day labour was performed. Labour contracts were sacrosanct. This aspect of the story was evidently not lost on Robert Browning, in whose famous poem on the Pied Piper references are made to biblical texts which are particularly pertinent to questions of wealth and contracts. Why then was the motif of defrauding a worker in the pest control industry introduced in the first place? Concern with pacts with the devil found its full expression in Marlowe's "Dr Faustus" and "The Devil is an Ass" by the same author takes a more humourous view of the devil's connection with modern capitalism. It seems to me that the combined story of a piper and ratcatcher reflects the growing emnity between the establishment and wage earners that was precipitated by the Black Death, when self-employed labour becamed a highly valued asset enabling workers and peasants to negotiate to their advantage and enhancing their self-esteem, but also their readiness to take the law into their own hands, hence the English Peasants' revolt and similar disturbances on the Continent, one of which was led by a "piper", the piper of Niklashausen, the leader of the so-called Bundschuh. By making the Piper the victim of a breech of contract, his detractors effectively blunted their own accusation that he was demonic, an irony that eventually helped Browning and others to rehabitate him.
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AN INTERVIEW WITH HERR GERNOT HÜSAM; DIRECTOR OF THE CASTLE MUSEUM IN COPPENBRÜGGE ON THE ORIGINS OF THE PIED PIPER LEGEND (SUMMER 2006)
Original German transcript on the site "The Pied Piper of Coppenbrügge"
May I introduce myself? I am Norbert Truckenbrot. You are the director of the Museum of Coppenbrügge and its affiliated Society, and I would like to ask you some questions. Our subject is the legend of the Pied Piper. We have gathered that you have also delved into this subject. What is the connection between the legend of the Pied Piper and Coppenbrügge.?
Let me say to begin with. Originally I myself had no particular interest in the legend of the Pied Piper when I began working at this museum. However, after receiving evidence from our former supervisor of forests, Herr Hamelung, I discovered these sculptured figures in the Ith (hill range), these figures in stone, and then my interest was greatly aroused when the museum archives revealed some further evidence on the subject, namely a theory proposed by an expert in folklore, Waltraut Wöller, who had presented a dissertation in 1957 in which she cited Coppenbrügge as an integral part of her interpretation of the legend of the Pied Piper.
Might it then be the case that the phrase "lost by the Koppen" means "lost in the vicinity of Coppenbrügge"?
That was her initial idea. Following the lead prompted by "Koppen", she inquired where such a place name was to be found immediately east of Hamelin. Naturally her search led to the location of Coppenbrügge. She subsequently held a conversation with the town mayor, then Herr Beckmann, who dispatched her up to the so called "Teufelsküche" ("the Devil's Kitchen") and supplied her with faulty etymological data that were later scrutinized and rejected, so the whole inquiry in effect fizzled out, and it was only when I myself discovered that we been in possession an official document from the year 1013 referring to the "Koppanberg" that it dawned on me that there was more to the theory than had previously been supposed.
Then this " Koppanberg" might be so named because carved figures of heads are represented there?
That's the main point of contention. The discovery of these figures in rock - these rock sculptures -as I venture to name them without reservation - was for me the true reason why I launched into researching ever further into the legend of the Pied Piper, and then another factor I had to consider was the role played in this matter by the Counts of Spiegelberg, that is to say the lords of the same castle manor in which this museum is housed. Local gossip has always associated these men with the story surrounding "the Devil's Kitchen". As this story goes, many people were "done in" because the counts made strenuous efforts to eradicate certain heathen rituals that were still being practised "up there" in those times. In effect the supposition behind the legend is that the youth of Hamelin together with a "Piper", a musician, left this place in order to indulge in heathen practices.
Is it possible that this area around the Fahnenstein was once a kind of mountain dancing platform? We noticed when making records of the scene yesterday that one can recognize apparent traces of a series of steps?
There are several aspects to consider here that clearly point to the fact that what today is called the Oberberg on the map is identical with the Koppanberg of earlier days, and this was a high hill and scene of heathen cultic practices, in other words a "Wallfahrtsberg" (mount of pilgrimage") in German. When viewed from a certain vantage point, it recalls events on the so called Blocksberg [in the Harz mountains where witches are said to perform occult rites] . The Ith poses exactly the same case. We may trace in these places long approach lanes for marchers, the extensions of which spiral round the dome at the summit There are also records and pictures showing this activity on the Blocksberg when devotees form long queues around the dome of the summit to celebrate Walpurgis night, for instance.
There are also some kind of long-drawn ditches or depressions to be found on the Ith. Could these signify that dance rituals and celebrations marking turning points in the solar calendar have taken place there?
We assume that beneath the Fahnenstein and the Devil's Kitchen there is a wide open surface, a flat ridge, in which such celebrations, dances to be precise, took place. However, what was celebrated in pagan times on the Koppan represents something quite different, as this upward spiraling procession leading to the highest apex is inextricably bound up with the fact that the mount and its summit served as a way of imitating the apparent course of the sun, its ascent and then its descent through the annual cycle. All this can only be described as part of a natural religion.
The date of the exodus of the children of Hamelin gives us cause to ponder. It happened in mid-summer and at this time in the Middle Ages it was customary to marry so that the children would be born in spring. Could this also have something to do with the exodus of the children of Hamelin and such dance festivities?
Indeed there is evidence to this effect in a rhyming prayer in Latin, the so called "Passionale Sanctorum". It was in the Münster Church, this „"Passionale" and the rhyming prayer recounts that in this year of 1284 members of "both sexes", or "sexus uterque", became faint. This points to acts of sexual abandonment and these are referred to again in another text - but superabundant details would probably take us too far from the subject. In short, we have evidence that in this case we are dealing with licentious behavior.
Back again to the subject of this "Devil's Kitchen". It is somehow an eerie place. Is it possible that a land slide or rock fall was caused by human intervention?
Well I am not inclined to believe that such an earth fall could have been caused by human action, but I can well imagine that there was a small cave entrance there, a small one which could have been covered by debris caused deliberately by smashing rocks. I think that is quite likely as a possibility..
Is the region up there in geological terms a fault line or prone to earth slides?
At any rate the way it is represented on geological maps of the area reveals that a fault line does run exactly through this area and extends as far as the Devil's Kitchen. Then again there is an area below this upper rock segment where Friedensruh is situated. …..
Herrn Hüsam, are likely to continue your research in this area? It is worth your while to carry on doing so?
My possibilities for doing research really have no basis as I have neither the geological nor the archaeological qualifications for the task. What I can try to do is essentially to shed further light on this topic with the help of documents handed down from earlier times. It is for others to work on everything apart from that.
What is the significance of the concept "hill of Calvary" in relation to the legend of the Pied Piper?
Yes, I can say something on this question straight away. The first thing to mention is the well-known inscription on a wall of the Rattenfängerhaus (House of the Rat-catcher/ Pied Piper) in Hamelin / Hameln. We find the word "Calvary" where the sentence ends: "bi Calvarie bi den Koppen verloren" ("lost beside Calvary at the Koppen"). The phrase "to Calvarie bezogen" (drawn to Calvarie") appears in various other sources and then is occasionally referred to as "the hill of Calvary". An important piece of knowledge is that Calvary should really be translated as skull or skull cover, and so we arrive at the semantic borderline with "head" , which is what "Koppen" means; thus many researchers have established a link between Calvary and a name for a place of execution and particularly for Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified. People like Hans Dobbertin then conflated the concepts of Koppenberg, the hill of Calvary and Golgotha as though they all meant the same, but that can never have been the case. There were always substantial differences between them, as in the Middle Ages itself the concept of Calvary referred exclusively to the head or skull surmounting the jaws of Hell, otherwise referred to as the lion's or dragon's mouth, that swallows sinners while little demons spare no effort to push poor wretches into this mouth with their tridents or other implements. This was the typically medieval image of the journey to Hell or the entry into the jaws of Hell up to the era of the Crusades, when a Minister General of the Franciscan order interpreted the Bible in such a way that the hill of Calvary, the skull, became synonymous with Golgotha, a concept which later included an association with places of execution, and thus Calvary acquired a new significance. In the course of the Crusades the hill of Calvary also became identified with what is called a "Wallfahrtsberg" in German, which means a pilgrimage centre situated on a mountain or pinnacle. Mont Saint Michel is such a location. In Austria there are various centres of pilgrimage of this kind, most eminently near Graz where 14 stations of the Passion lie on the path leading up to a chapel, though in other cases a path may lead to the final station marked by three crosses. At this so called mount Calvary the faithful complete their pilgrimage in a process described in German by the verb "wallfahren". Such a version of the "mount of Calvary" emerged later in the course of history but the original meaning of the word in the Middle Ages, which is the only one pertinent to the story of the Pied Piper, signifies the mouth, the jaws, of Hell.
And there the children of Hamelin may possibly have disappeared?
Yes, at least I strongly suspect that the children were led to a cave in the heights of the Ith and entered it with the Pied Piper, as this accords with the notion of a journey to Hell, and in this case it was a literal journey, as they never emerged from ithat cave again, and that is what makes this event so woeful in the minds of people in the Middle Ages, woeful because the young people entered Hell and had no chance of ever finding the Kingdom of God. That's all I have to say on the subject of Calvary.
Is it at all possible that such rites relating to the solar cycle still take place?
I have indeed experienced such an occasion myself at the Wackelstein (a boulder that rocks or wobbles, not being firmly fixed to its pivotal base). I went up there on midsummer's night, the 21st of June, in fact while it was still twilight and almost dark. When I reached the Wackelstein, what should I see but tea-light candles adorned with flowers on this dish-shaped stone. They were still burning, mark you. There in the middle lay the severed neck of a swan, a remarkable sight, and then there was a rock at the side and this also had niches in it and even here tealight candles had been placed. I think I must have arrived at the spot immediately after the celebration of an occult rite.
Does that square with the account given by our senior forest supervisory officer, who once came across chickens' bones amid flowers and candles ?
It most surely it does.
Do pilgrimages still continue?
I am inclined to think that the pilgrimage does in fact still take place, but not on the hill itself but rather in the guise of a pilgrimage to Marienau (a chapel in a hamlet at the foot of the Ith). It is celebrated as the annual festival of dedication. It is really the last vestige of the many previous pilgrimages to the so called holy mountain spring which formed an appendage of the sanctuary in Marienau. If one takes a closer look at the concept of "Wallahrt", one will discover that it is related etymologically to "Wallküre" (female spirit attending heroes in the afterlife),"Wallstatt", "Wallraub" and "Walhalle" (Valhalle), that is to say, in every case words making a reference to death in some way. Well then, "Wallfahrt" basically means a journey to the dead. It follows that people in the distant past made their way to the burial places of their ancestors, and that is what came to be called a "Wallfahrt", and this involved not only paying reverence to the departed but also providing for the need to propagate new life, or, to call a spade a spade, freely engaging in sexual activities of the kind I have referred to. The time for all this was in the summer. So much for the concept of "Wallfahrt".
Is it possible that these figures in stone or large sculptures called Adam and Eve are connected with ancient cults? Tradition has it that couples held engagement ceremonies there in earlier times.
That is correct. I myself have heard from the elderly inhabitants of Bessingen that newly engaged couples used to take a walk up to Adam and Eve. There on one of the larger and thicker rocks was a book placed in a metal box and in this they could write an entry as newly engaged couples below Adam and Eve, and we can be sure, incidentally, that both these figures were revered in pre-Christian times. I have a feeling that the female figure, which for some strange reason has always been called Adam, may in fact have been the representation of a pagan goddess, say Freya (cf. Friday).
That is to say the goddess of fertility?
As a possible example, yes: there is a source which I consider to be very significant, a water colour dating from 1592. . (Editor: to see this, click;
http://www.writing.com/main/redirect.php?redirect_url=http://commons.wikimedi... ). This water colour was copied by an artist from observing glass doors in the houses of burghers of Hamelin. I have undertaken an interpretation of this picture in accordance with the pictorial symbolism of the medieval period, and observed some interesting things in the process. Consider, for example, how the picture is divided into significant areas. Looming very large on the left side is the Piper. He reaches the top and bottom of the scene. For the left side in this case, read dangerous, evil and seductive. The right still means in German the right and the good, and on the right side of the picture, we see standing on the other bank of the Weser a figure called a "Petrifischer" in German, and anyone with a good knowledge of the Bible will understand the connection between this figure and Saint Peter. His purpose is to save souls. A saviour of souls, cutting a small figure to the right, stands holding his fishing rod, and an observer of this picture could figure out the direction in which the Weser flowed from the slant of the fishing line. The medieval observer was able to read the picture just like a book. And thus people who have a lot of brainpower are called „gebildet" (well educated, based on the root "bild" meaning picture or image"). The words "Bild" and "Bildung" (education at a high cultural level) are inextricably connected and the basic lesson in this entire story is that the centre of a picture in the medieval period conveyed the corresponding central message it was to convey. The centre of this picture, though nobody has paid great heed to this point before now, is occupied by three stags in front of three trees.
Does this have anything to do with the place where we now are?
Just so. The three stags are to be interpreted in the light of their actions. One of them is browsing, another has just lain down and the third one is apparently eating too, and if you look closely you will see the third one is quite small and with little horns, so it must be very young while the other two are fully grown and mature. There were at the time when the legend of the Pied Piper originated three counts, brothers, who resided in this castle and took the stag as the emblem shown on their coat of arms. They were Nikolaus von Spiegelberg, his brother Moritz and the junior Hermann. He was so young that he didn't even have permission to employ a seal, and a legal document from those times, together with its seals, is on display in the museum. The three fell under suspicion of terminating the ongoing heathen practices by some kind of "measure"
Perhaps the foundation of the abbey in Marienau shortly after this event is not unrelated to that measure (with the implication that it was not only generosity that motivated this munificent gesture).
I must say a word about this picture. It shows the motif of the town of Hamelin and the Weser as well as Peter the Fisherman. They all compose a pictorial unity. There the affair of the rats comes to the fore. This topic has previously never entered any discussion about the Pied Piper's origins. It has always been assumed that the legend about a rat-catcher got appended to the original legend at some time around the year 1550 - by way of an additional explanation of what had once happened. No, I am firmly convinced that the theme of the rat-catcher formed a part of the legend from the very start but has to be understood in a new and unconventional way., namely in line with pictorial symbolism. In medieval times the rat - or the mouse to be precise - symbolizes the soul. It is essential to recognize this. What is the role of rats and mice with regard to the picture? The soul is represented by the image of the mouse or rat simply because they appear to come out of the earth and it was earlier the widely held belief that in the earth or under it lay the domain of the souls of the dead and in this context everything represented by rat scares and catching mice is nothing other than a way of treating the subject of the human soul. This is confirmed by the presence of Peter as the fisherman of souls, who wants to go fishing and save souls, but any observer can see that the fishing line cannot catch even a single mouse or rat because they are all being driven away from the river in another direction. None of them stands a chance as the fisherman is positioned much too far from the boat in the middle of the river where the ferryman is sitting and gesticuling wildly to prevent any rat from boarding the boat. On the other bank the Piper is sitting and constantly blowing his pipe so that the rats all wander into the Weser, and this is very clearly a symbol based on the doctrine on souls and the migration of the souls of the dead across the river to the hereafter, the other realm. The ferryman is a feature of all this. The scene presents a typical soul-related motif but no one has grasped this fact for some unknown reason. It all has to do with medieval teaching on the nature and fate of souls. That's all on this picture.
Herr Hüsam, thank you very much for this interview.
My pleasure.