chroniclers, however, repeatedly asserted the identity of Dietrich and Theodoric, although the more critical noted the anachronisms involved in making Ermanaric (d. 376) and Attila (d. 453) contemporary with Theodoric (b. 455). That the legend is based on vague historical reminiscences is proved by the retention of the names of Theodoric (Thiuda-reiks, Dietrich) and his father Theudemir (Dietmar), by Dietrich’s connexion with Bern (Verona) and Raben (Ravenna). Something of the Gothic king’s character descended to Dietrich, familiarly called the Berner, the favourite of German medieval saga heroes, although his story did not leave the same mark on later German literature as did that of the Nibelungs. The cycle of songs connected with his name in South Germany is partially preserved in the Heldenbuch (q.v.) in Dietrich’s Flucht, the Rabenschlacht and Alpharts Tod; but it was reserved for an Icelandic author, writing in Norway in the 13th century, to compile, with many romantic additions, a consecutive account of Dietrich. In this Norse prose redaction, known as the Vilkina Saga, or more correctly the Thidrekssaga, is incorporated much extraneous matter from the Nibelungen and Wayland legends, in fact practically the whole of south German heroic tradition.
There are traces of a form of the Dietrich legend in which he was represented as starting out from Byzantium, in accordance with historical tradition, for his conquest of Italy. But this early disappeared, and was superseded by the existing legend, in which, perhaps by an “epic fusion” with his father Theudemir, he was associated with Attila, and then by an easy transition with Ermanaric. Dietrich was driven from his kingdom of Bern by his uncle Ermanaric. After years of exile at the court of Attila he returned with a Hunnish army to Italy, and defeated Ermanaric in the Rabenschlacht, or battle of Ravenna. Attila’s two sons, with Dietrich’s brother, fell in the fight, and Dietrich returned to Attila’s court to answer for the death of the young princes. This very improbable renunciation of the advantages of his victory suggests that in the original version of the story the Rabenschlacht was a defeat. In the poem of Ermenrichs Tod he is represented as slaying Ermanaric, as in fact Theodoric slew Odoacer. “Otacher” replaces Ermanaric as his adversary in the Hildebrandslied, which relates how thirty years after the earlier attempt he reconquered his Lombard kingdom. Dietrich’s long residence at Attila’s court represents the youth and early manhood of Theodoric spent at the imperial court and fighting in the Balkan peninsula, and, in accordance with epic custom, the period of exile was adorned with war-like exploits, with fights with dragons and giants, most of which had no essential connexion with the cycle. The romantic poems of König Laurin, Sigenot, Eckenlied and Virginal are based largely on local traditions originally independent of Dietrich. The court of Attila (Etzel) was a ready bridge to the Nibelungen legend. In the final catastrophe he was at length compelled, after steadily holding aloof from the combat, to avenge the slaughter of his Amelungs by the Burgundians, and delivered Hagen bound into the hands of Kriemhild. The flame breath which anger induced from him shows the influence of pure myth, but the tales of his demonic origin and of his being carried off by the devil in the shape of a black horse may safely be put down to the clerical hostility to Theodoric’s Arianism.
Generally speaking, Dietrich of Bern was the wise and just monarch as opposed to Ermanaric, the typical tyrant of Germanic legend. He was invariably represented as slow of provocation and a friend of peace, but once roused to battle not even Siegfried could withstand his onslaught. But probably Dietrich’s fight with Siegfried in Kriemhild’s rose garden at Worms is a late addition to the Rosengarten myth. The chief heroes of the Dietrich cycle are his tutor and companion in arms, Hildebrand (see Hildebrand, Lay of), with his nephews the Wolfings Alphart and Wolfhart; Wittich, who renounced his allegiance to Dietrich and slew the sons of Attila; Heime and Biterolf.
The contents of the poems dealing with the Dietrich cycle are summarized by Uhland in Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage (Stuttgart, 1873). The Thidrekssaga (ed. C. Unger, Christiania, 1853) is translated into German by F. H. v. der Hagen in Altdeutsche und altnordische Heldensagen (vols. i. and ii. 3rd ed., Breslau, 1872). A summary of it forms the concluding chapter of T. Hodgkin’s Theodoric the Goth (1891). The variations in the Dietrich legend in the Latin historians, in Old and Middle High German literature, and in the northern saga, can be studied in W. Grimm’s Deutsche Heldensage (2nd ed., Berlin, 1867). There is a good account in English in F. E. Sandbach’s Heroic Saga-cycle of Dietrich of Bern (1906), forming No. 15 of Alfred Nutt’s Popular Studies in Mythology, and another in M. Bentinck Smith’s translation of Dr O. L. Jiriczek’s Deutsche Heldensage (Northern Legends, London, 1902). For modern German authorities and commentators see B. Symons, “Deutsche Heldensage” in H. Paul’s Grd. d. german. Phil. (Strassburg, new ed., 1905); also Goedeke, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung (i. 241-246).
DIEZ, FRIEDRICH CHRISTIAN (1794–1876), German philologist, was born at Giessen, in Hesse-Darmstadt, on the 15th of March 1794. He was educated first at the gymnasium and then at the university of his native town. There he studied classics under Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker (1784–1868) who had just returned from a two years’ residence in Italy to fill the chair of archaeology and Greek literature. It was Welcker who kindled in him a love of Italian poetry, and thus gave the first bent to his genius. In 1813 he joined the Hesse corps as a volunteer and served in the French campaign. Next year he returned to his books, and this short taste of military service was the only break in a long and uneventful life of literary labours. By his parents’ desire he applied himself for a short time to law, but a visit to Goethe in 1818 gave a new direction to his studies, and determined his future career. Goethe had been reading Raynouard’s Selections from the Romance Poets, and advised the young scholar to explore the rich mine of Provençal literature which the French savant had opened up. This advice was eagerly followed, and henceforth Diez devoted himself to Romance literature. He thus became the founder of Romance philology. After supporting himself for some years by private teaching, he removed in 1822 to Bonn, where he held the position of privatdocent. In 1823 he published his first work, An Introduction to Romance Poetry; in the following year appeared The Poetry of the Troubadours, and in 1829 The Lives and Works of the Troubadours. In 1830 he was called to the chair of modern literature. The rest of his life was mainly occupied with the composition of the two great works on which his fame rests, the Grammar of the Romance Languages (1836–1844), and the Lexicon of the Romance Languages—Italian, Spanish and French (1853); in these two works Diez did for the Romance group of languages what Jacob Grimm did for the Teutonic family. He died at Bonn on the 29th of May 1876.
The earliest French philologists, such as Perion and Henri Estienne, had sought to discover the origin of French in Greek and even in Hebrew. For more than a century Ménage’s Etymological Dictionary held the field without a rival. Considering the time at which it was written (1650), it was a meritorious work, but philology was then in the empirical stage, and many of Ménage’s derivations (such as that of “rat” from the Latin “mus,” or of “haricot” from “faba”) have since become bywords among philologists. A great advance was made by Raynouard, who by his critical editions of the works of the Troubadours, published in the first years of the 19th century, laid the foundations on which Diez afterwards built. The difference between Diez’s method and that of his predecessors is well stated by him in the preface to his dictionary. In sum it is the difference between science and guess-work. The scientific method is to follow implicitly the discovered principles and rules of phonology, and not to swerve a foot’s breadth from them unless plain, actual exceptions shall justify it; to follow the genius of the language, and by cross-questioning to elicit its secrets; to gauge each letter and estimate the value which attaches to it in each position; and lastly to possess the true philosophic spirit which is prepared to welcome any new fact, though it may modify or upset the most cherished theory. Such is the historical method which Diez pursues in his grammar and dictionary. To collect and arrange facts is, as he tells us, the sole secret of his success, and he adds in other words the famous apophthegm of Newton, “hypotheses non fingo.” The introduction to the grammar consists of two parts:—the first discusses the Latin, Greek and Teutonic elements common to the Romance languages; the second treats of the six dialects separately, their origin and the elements peculiar to each. The grammar itself is divided into four books, on phonology, on flexion, on the formation of words by composition and derivation, and on syntax.
His dictionary is divided into two parts. The first contains words common to two at least of the three principal groups of Romance:—Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, and Provençal and French. The Italian, as nearest the original, is placed at the head of each article.
