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75-634: The text is extant in a single ninth-century manuscript: Clm 14098 of the Bavarian State Library , Munich. The bulk of the manuscript contains a Latin theological text presented between 821 and 827 by Adalram , bishop of Salzburg , to the young Louis the German ( c.  810–876 ). Into this orderly written manuscript, the text of the Muspilli was untidily entered, with numerous scribal errors, using blank pages, lower margins and even

150-531: A beast, but then revived by the Spirit of Life and taken up into Heaven. These witnesses were traditionally identified with Enoch (Genesis 5, 24) and Elijah (received into Heaven in 2 Kings 2, 11). The Antichrist is most closely identifiable with one or other of the beasts described in Apocalypse 13, though the term itself is used elsewhere (1 John 2, 18) to denote apostates, false Christs, whose coming will signal

225-452: A cleric in Louis the German 's entourage. Murdoch placed the emphasis differently. Though the Muspilli seems to be 'directed toward the noblemen who would be entrusted with the business of law', the work's legal significance should not be exaggerated. A corrupt judiciary was not the author's main target, despite his pointed criticism. His true concerns lay elsewhere, in warning all mortals of

300-433: A destructive force, coming as a thief in the night, and associated with the end of the world. In Old Norse , Muspellr occurs as a proper name, apparently that of the progenitor or leader of a band of fighters ('Muspellr's sons'), who are led by fiery Surtr against the gods at Ragnarök (a series of events heralding the death of major deities, including Odin , Thor, Týr, Freyr and Loki). The oldest known occurrences are in

375-541: A differentiated legal background (see below). Categorising the Muspilli as a sermon or homily, Murdoch saw in it these same two 'basic strains': theological and juridical. In recent decades the theological content has again been studied by Carola Gottzmann and Martin Kuhnert. There has also been renewed attention to sources, textual issues, and the word muspilli . Looking back from 2009, Pakis reported on two 'peculiar trends'. Recent German literary histories either ignore

450-407: A far more conservative treatment. Increasingly, the aim has been to approach the Muspilli as a complicated work that is functionally adequate, regardless of its ostensible stylistic flaws, and to interpret it in its 9th century Christian context, whilst also sharply questioning or rejecting its allegedly pagan elements. Kolb felt that to demand an unbroken narrative sequence is to misunderstand

525-700: A following in modern popular culture. Bavarian State Library The Bavarian State Library (German: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek , abbreviated BSB , called Bibliotheca Regia Monacensis before 1919) in Munich is the central " Landesbibliothek ", i. e. the state library of the Free State of Bavaria , the biggest universal and research library in Germany and one of Europe's most important universal libraries. With its collections currently comprising around 10.89 million books (as of 2019), it ranks among

600-511: A highly conjectural stemma with Christ III, Heliand and other poems. Schneider rejected Baesecke's radical dissections, but still considered the work a composite, with its pristine poetic integrity repeatedly disrupted (in lines 18 ff, 63 ff, and 97 ff) by the 'mediocre' moralising of a 'garrulous preacher'. In contrast, Gustav Ehrismann (1918) respected the work's integrity: he saw no need to assume interpolations, nor any pagan Germanic features apart from possible echoes in

675-513: A separate reading room that is specially equipped for working with old books. This department administrates printed maps from the year 1500 up to the present, atlases, cartographic material and the image archive of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek . The image archive also includes parts of the archives of Heinrich Hoffmann , Bernhard Johannes and Felicitas Timpe. The Map Collection and Image Archive also have – together with

750-564: A single author, or a conglomerate of chronologically separate redactions of varying quality and diverse function. The second of these approaches culminated in Minis' 1966 monograph. Minis stripped away the sermonising passages, discarded lines containing rhymes and inferior alliteration, and assumed that small portions of text had been lost at the beginning and in the middle of the poem. These procedures left him with an 'Urtext' of 15 strophes, varying in length from 5 to 7 lines and forming

825-410: A symmetrical pattern rich in number symbolism. The result of this drastic surgery was certainly a more unified work of art, alliterative in form and narrative or epic in content. But reviewers (e.g. Steinhoff, Seiffert) soon pointed out serious flaws in Minis's reasoning. Though it remains possible that the documented text was inept expansion of a well-formed, shorter original, later scholars have favoured

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900-535: A syntactic break between lines 50 and 51, which 'would remove the non-biblical notion that the fire is immediately consequent upon, or even caused by, the shedding of Elias' blood.' That causal connection was also dismissed by Kolb and Finger, but affirmed by Mohr & Haug. Good support for a firm linkage came at last in 1980 from Groos and Hill, who reported on a close Christian analogue, hitherto unknown, from an 8th century Spanish formulary, predicting that on Judgment Day an all-consuming flame will rise up from

975-528: A verdict frequently echoed in 20th century research. On many issues, agreement is still lacking. Its reception by scholars is significant in its own right, and as a study in evolving critical paradigms. Already by 1900, this (literally) marginal work had come to be monumentalised alongside other medieval texts against a background of German nation-building, but also in keeping with the powerful, European-wide interest in national antiquities and their philological investigation. Early researchers were keen to trace

1050-522: A vernacular language at such an early date. With biblical support and backed by established dogma, the poet evidently saw no difficulty in juxtaposing the particular judgment (lines 1–30, with souls consigned immediately ( sar ) to Heaven or Hell) and the general judgment on the Last Day (31–36 and 50 ff). Most of the poem's Christian features are an amalgam of elements from the Bible. Key passages in

1125-548: Is a reference in Tertullian 's De anima (early 3rd century), where Enoch and Elijah are martyred by the Antichrist, who is then 'destroyed by their blood' However, our poet continues, (many?) gotmann- ('men of God', 'theologians'?) believe that Elias will be wounded (or slain?) (the verb aruuartit is ambiguous). In Kolb's interpretation, it is Elias's defeat which makes the final conflagration inevitable. preferred

1200-456: Is also possible that a single poet deliberately chose to vary the verse forms in this way. With the Day of Punishment or Penance ( stuatago ) at hand, no man is able to help a kinsman before the muspilli . Amidst this destruction, what is left of the borderlands where humans once fought alongside their kinsfolk? Damned souls have no further chance of remorse and will be taken off to Hell. In 1832

1275-501: Is director general of the Bavarian State Library. The head office, the assistant to the directors, the office of corporate counsel, the information technology department and the public relations department are also part of the directorate. Directors general: The central administration is in charge of general administrative management; moreover, it acts as a service provider for all areas of the library. The department

1350-520: Is provided for the library users. The oriental collections of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek comprise 260,000 volumes in Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Mongolian, Persian, Tibetan and Indian languages. The East-Asian collections comprise more than 310,000 volumes in the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese languages. Users can avail themselves of the open-access collections in

1425-423: Is responsible for the areas "budget", "human resources" and "internal services, construction". This department acquires all types of media (in the form or by way of presents, purchase, licensing, deposit copies and swapping items), and catalogues and indexes them both formally and according to subject. The Munich Digitisation Centre is a section of the department. It handles the digitisation and online publication of

1500-505: Is usually analysed as a two-part compound, with well over 20 different etymologies proposed, depending on whether the word is seen as a survival from old Germanic, pagan times, or as a newly coined Christian term originating within the German-speaking area. Only a few examples can be mentioned here. As possible meanings, Bostock, King and McLintock favoured 'pronouncement about (the fate of) the world' or 'destruction (or destroyer) of

1575-799: The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek . The BSB publishes the specialist journal Bibliotheksforum Bayern and has been publishing the Bibliotheksmagazin together with the Berlin State Library since 2007. Its building is situated in the Ludwigstrasse . In 2019, the library counted 78,600 active users and 1,173,000 loans. Its reading rooms are used by around 4,000 readers every day. In the general reading room, open daily from 8 AM to 12 AM, approximately 111,000 volumes, primarily reference works, are freely accessible. Additionally, every day approximately 1,500 volumes are retrieved from

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1650-609: The Poetic Edda : Völuspá (51  Muspells lýþir ) and Lokasenna (42  Muspells synir ) (originals 10th century, manuscripts from about 1270). More elaborate detail on Ragnarök is supplied in the Prose Edda (attributed to Snorri Sturluson , compiled round 1220, manuscripts from about 1300), and here the section known as Gylfaginning (chapters 4, 13, and 51) has references to Muspell(i), Muspells megir, Muspells synir and Muspells heimr . Muspilli

1725-544: The Apocalypse of Thomas , in a tradition later formalised as the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday . A further biblical source was the canonical Book of Revelation with its visions of monsters, battles, fire and blood. The Muspilli shows greater freedom in its handling of these elements. Chapter 11, 3ff. of the Apocalypse tells how two witnesses (Greek martyres , Latin testes ), empowered by God, will be killed by

1800-695: The Landesbibliothek Coburg , the Bamberg State Library (German: Staatsbibliothek Bamberg ) as well as the Hofbibliothek Aschaffenburg . The library was founded in 1558 as the court library of Duke Albrecht V , and was originally located in the vaulted chamber of the Alter Hof (old court) of the Munich residence. Initially, two book collections were acquired: on the one hand the personal papers of

1875-628: The Lex Baiuwariorum , an 8th century collection of laws: According to Kolb, the poet aimed to prevent listeners from approaching God's Judgment with expectations derived from secular law, informing them that the King of Heaven's summons cannot be ignored, that the Heavenly Judge is incorruptible, and that bribery is itself a sin which must be revealed on Judgment Day. In Kolb's view, the difference between earthly and Heavenly justice

1950-411: The Muspilli altogether, or they 'reinstate the old bias towards mythological interpretations'. Pakis's personal plea is for a new recognition of the Muspilli in all its complexity, as 'a locus of polyvocality and interpretive tensions' As an exemplar of Christian eschatology , much of the Muspilli is theologically conventional, and remarkable mainly for its vivid presentation of Christian themes in

2025-601: The "Sibylline Acrostic" (3rd century?), and works by or attributed to Ephrem the Syrian , Bede , Adso of Montier-en-Der and others. Baesecke posited a firm relationship with the Old English Christ III . In Finger's view, the Muspilli poet probably knew and used the Old English poem. Many of the correspondences proposed are too slight to carry conviction. Conceding that the 'hunt for parallels'

2100-553: The 'absolute necessity of right behavior on earth'. The poem is starkly dualistic, dominated by antagonisms: God and Satan, angels and devils, Heaven and Hell, Elias and the Antichrist. Our text breaks off in narrative mode, on a seemingly conciliatory note: Preceded by the Cross, Christ displays at this Second Coming His stigmata, the bodily wounds which He suffered for love of humankind. For Minis, renaming his reconstructed 'original' as 'The Way to Eternal Salvation', this climactic vision

2175-511: The 'last days'. The Muspilli makes no mention of Enoch, and so the Antichrist faces Elias in single combat. Both are presented as strong champions in a dispute of great importance(line 40). Comparisons have sometimes been made with the Old High German Hildebrandslied , which depicts in a secular setting a fatal encounter between two champions, father and son. But in the Muspilli the contest between Elias and

2250-517: The 'men of God' is implied here. Another troublesome issue was eventually resolved. The traditional reading of lines 48–51 was that Elias's blood, dripping down onto the earth, would directly set it aflame. For decades, scholars could only point to geographically and chronologically distant parallels in Russian texts and folklore; this evidence was re-examined by Kolb. As the manuscript is defective at this point, Bostock, King, & McLintock suggested

2325-444: The Antichrist is presented in much plainer terms. Opinions are divided as to whether our poet suppressed the role of Enoch in order to present the duel as a judicially significant ordeal by combat. Lines 37–49 are often understood as reflecting two opposing contemporary views. In this reading, the uueroltrehtuuîson ('men wise in worldly law'?) expect Elias to prevail in this judicial contest, since he has God's support. And unlike

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2400-606: The Asian part of Russia. The open-access collection of the department is accommodated in the library's east reading room. The departments in charge of tasks predominantly allocated to a regional level are the Bayerische Bibliotheksschule (Bavarian School of Library and Information Science), the Landesfachstelle für das öffentliche Bibliothekswesen (Consulting Centre for Public Libraries) as well as

2475-614: The Austrian jurist, orientalist and imperial chancellor Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter , consisting of oriental manuscripts and prints, editions of classic authors and works from the areas of theology, philosophy und jurisprudence, and on the other hand the collection of the Augsburg patrician Johann Jakob Fugger, which was acquired in 1571. Fugger had commissioned agents to collect volumes of manuscripts and printed works in Italy, Spain and

2550-733: The Bavarian State Library returned 78 volumes originating from Thomas Mann 's research library to the Thomas Mann Archive in Zürich in 2007. Further restitutions are in preparation, for example 252 books from the former publishing house Geca Kon. 48°08′50″N 11°34′50″E  /  48.14722°N 11.58056°E  / 48.14722; 11.58056 Elias von Steinmeyer Elias von Steinmeyer (8 February 1848, in Nowawes, near Potsdam – 8 March 1922, in Erlangen )

2625-625: The Gospels (particularly Matthew 24, 29 ff; 25, 31 ff; and Luke 21, 5 ff) predict calamities and signs, including a darkening of sun and moon, the stars falling from the heavens and a loud trumpet, followed by Christ's Second Coming and the Last Judgment . The Second Epistle of Peter, chapter 3, foretells the 'Day of the Lord' and its all-consuming fire. Many significant signs are described in 2(4) Esdras 5, and in non-canonical works such as

2700-591: The Jesuits, who had been invited to Munich in 1559. William V continued the collection, making further purchases: In 1600 the collection comprised 17,000 volumes. The secularization of Bavaria and the transfer of the court library of the Electorate of the Palatinate around the year 1803 added approximately 550,000 volumes and 18,600 manuscripts to the library's holdings. In 1827 Friedrich von Gärtner

2775-527: The Mighty King's summons to Final Judgment is followed by an episode in which Elias fights with the Antichrist. Guided by spelling, style and metre, Baesecke claimed that lines 37–62 (labelled by him as 'Muspilli II') had been adapted from an old poem on the destruction of the world and inserted into the main body of the work ('Muspilli I', which had another old poem as its source). Baesecke later (1948–50) linked 'Muspilli II' genetically in

2850-568: The Netherlands. In the end the works collected in this way amounted to more than 10,000 volumes. At the same time, he had had manuscripts copied in Venice. Apart from this, in 1552 Fugger had purchased the collection of manuscripts and incunabula of the physician and humanist Hartmann Schedel , representing one of the richest humanistic private libraries north of the Alps . The Fugger collection

2925-598: The beast of the biblical Apocalypse, which temporarily kills God's two witnesses, the Antichrist (with Satan at his side) will be brought down and denied victory. compared this outcome with a Christianised Coptic version of the Apocalypse of Elijah , in which Elijah and Enoch kill a figure posing as Christ ('the Shameless One', 'the Son of Lawlessness') in a second contest, following the Last Judgment. Different again

3000-546: The blood of Enoch and Elijah. Describing Judgment Day, the poet used terms and concepts drawn from secular law. Some examples are highlighted in the Synopsis, above. Most strikingly, the King of Heaven issues His summons ( kipannit daz mahal ), using a technical expression rooted in Germanic law, but relevant also to contemporary politics. Comparisons have also been made with the roles of co-jurors and champions as laid down in

3075-471: The building planned by Gärtner was concluded in 1843. In 1919 the library received the name that it still bears today: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek . During the Second World War more than 500,000 volumes were lost, although the collections were partly evacuated from the building. Some of the books were for example stored in the palace chapel of Schloss Haimhausen . Of the building itself 85%

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3150-438: The catalogue of incunabula 1450–1500 were converted, thus making the complete holdings of printed materials of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek available online. The service "Digitisation on Demand", offered by a network of several European libraries, makes millions of books published between 1500 and 1900 available in digital form. On 7 March 2007 Director General Rolf Griebel announced that Google Book Search will take over

3225-445: The collections and services of the library. The department consists of the divisions of document provision, document administration, document delivery and information- and reading-room services. The department of manuscripts and early printed books is responsible for the most valuable historical collections of the library. The worldwide renown of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek is founded on this precious heritage. The department has

3300-431: The cultural heritage preserved by the Bavarian State Library and by other institutions. It provides one of the largest and fastest growing digital collections in Germany. The department is also responsible for conservation and collection care. This division protects the media published from the year 1850 onward against damage and decay. It secures their long-term availability. The user services department acts as an agent of

3375-590: The dedication page. Though in Carolingian minuscules , the handwriting is not that of a trained scribe. The language is essentially Bavarian dialect of the middle or late 9th century. The poem's beginning and ending are missing: they were probably written on the manuscript's outer leaves, which have since been lost. Legibility has always been a problem with this text, and some early editors used reagents which have left permanent stains. There are many conjectural readings, some of them crucial to modern interpretation of

3450-514: The department of music – their own reading room. The Department of Music ranks among the world's leading music libraries, due to both the quantity and quality of its historical collections and its broad acquisition profile. Its beginnings date back to the 16th century. The area of collection emphasis "musicology" of the German Research Foundation is overseen by this department. A special reading room for music, maps and images

3525-589: The digitisation of the copyright -free holdings of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek . In 2008, the year of its 450th anniversary, the Deutscher Bibliotheksverband (German Library Association) awarded the title of Bibliothek des Jahres (Library of the year) to the BSB. In 2012 an Italian scholar discovered among Johann Jakob Fugger's manuscripts in the library an 11th-century Greek codex containing 29 ancient homilies, previously unpublished, by

3600-578: The earth'. Like Sperber and Krogmann, Finger argued that the word originated in Old Saxon as a synonym for Christ, 'He who slays with the word of His mouth' (as in 2 Thessalonians 2, 8 and Apocalypse 19, 15). Finger also contended that the word was imported into Norway (not Iceland) under Christian influence, and that the Old Norse texts (though themselves touched by Christianity) show no deeper understanding of its meaning. Jeske also regarded

3675-412: The east reading room occupied together with the department of Eastern Europe. The department of Eastern Europe is the largest special department of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek , holding around one million books about and from Eastern Europe, from early modern times up to the 21st century. In addition to the eastern European area, it also addresses eastern central and south-eastern Europe as well as

3750-476: The first editor, Johann Andreas Schmeller , proposed as the poem's provisional title what seemed to be a key word in line 57: dar nimac denne mak andremo helfan uora demo muspille ('there no kinsman is able to help another before the muspilli ). This is the only known occurrence of this word in Old High German. Its immediate context is the destruction of the world by fire, but it is unclear whether

3825-405: The fragmented order of its time, and as an invective, aimed at correcting some aspects of that fragmentation. In a landmark dissertation of the same year, Finger saw no further need to search for survivals from pagan mythology, since even the most problematic portions of the Muspilli contain nothing that is alien to patristic thought. Equally illuminating was Finger's placement of the work against

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3900-581: The head office of the Bavarian Library Network ( Bibliotheksverbund Bayern ). The Bavarian regional state-funded libraries form part of Bavaria's academic library system. They are subordinated to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in the organisation structure. Among these libraries are the state libraries of Amberg , Ansbach , Neuburg an der Donau , Passau and Regensburg , the Studienbibliothek Dillingen ,

3975-760: The leading research libraries worldwide. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek furthermore is Europe's second-largest journals library (after the British Library ). Furthermore, its historical holdings encompass one of the most important manuscript collections of the world, the largest collection of incunabula worldwide, as well as numerous further important special collections. Its collection of historical prints before 1850 totals almost one million units. The legal deposit law, still applicable today, has been in force since 1663 and requires that two copies of every printed work published in Bavaria have to be submitted to

4050-535: The lost ending the poet moderated his awesome narrative, nor that the moralising commentator withheld an uncompromisingly didactic conclusion. Muspilli was used for the title of a 1900 novel. Muspilli is here invoked as a destructive fire, along with motifs from Germanic mythology such as Loki and the Midgard serpent. Since the 1970s, the Muspilli has been set to music as a sacred work. Its apocalyptic theme and mythological associations have also won it something of

4125-444: The manuscript in 1973 for 6,200 DM at an auction in Munich. In the past years, the library has searched through those segments of its collections that are in question for illegitimate purchases. All in all, over 60,000 books have been meticulously checked so far. The library has identified around 500 books whose acquisition is to be regarded as unlawful. Subsequently, to these findings, several restitutions have taken place, amongst others

4200-497: The professors Hans Döllgast und Sep Ruf had to plan and realize the reconstruction of the eastern wing, a new area behind historic walls, and the extension building of the Bavarian State Library, a glass-steel frame construction for the bibliotheca. They made an available surface of 17.000 m and a cubature of 84.000 m . 1967 a jury with Hans Scharoun gave the price of the BDA Bayern to the extension building. The inauguration of

4275-424: The reading 'wounded' and saw nothing contrary to apocalyptic tradition in this encounter, though references to Enoch and Elijah as victors are very unusual. Perhaps the poet was deliberately using ambiguity to accommodate a range of opinions. But the obscure three-part compound uueroltrehtuuîson has also been glossed as 'people of the right faith' or 'learned men' – in which case no polar opposition between them and

4350-511: The repositories and made available for use there. In the periodicals reading room around 18,000 topical issues of current periodicals are available. The departments of manuscripts and early printed books, maps and images, music, as well as Eastern Europe, Orient and East Asia have their own reading rooms with open-access collections. In 2010, a new research reading room was opened, focusing on Historical Sciences and Bavarian History and Culture (Aventinus Reading Room). Since 1 April 2015 Klaus Ceynowa

4425-522: The restored south wing of the building in 1970 marked the conclusion of the reconstruction work on the building. The Speicherbibliothek Garching (book repository) was inaugurated in 1988. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has also initiated large-scale internet projects. In 1997 the Munich Digitization Center took up work and the BSB started developing its web portals, including its own web site. The card catalogue 1841–1952 and

4500-624: The role of Elias in our poem and the Norse god Freyr, killed by Surtr, who is linked with Muspellr and his sons. Apocalyptic speculation was a common Hebrew-Christian heritage, and interesting parallels exist in some early Jewish pseudepigrapha . For the work's Christian elements, many correspondences have been cited from the Early Church Fathers (Greek and Latin), apocryphal writings, Sibylline Oracles , including in Book ;VIII

4575-571: The theologian Origen of Alexandria. Since 2003 the Bavarian State Library has gone to great efforts to restitute illegally-acquired library material. The most recent example is the restitution of the so-called Plock Pontifical to Poland in April 2015. It had been stolen by the Nazis from the Plock Bishopric in 1940 and was taken to Königsberg University . The Bavarian State Library bought

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4650-434: The word muspille . Von Steinmeyer also regarded the existing text as a unity. Though he found the transition from line 36 to 37 'hard and abrupt', he attributed it to the author's own limitations, which in his view also included poor vocabulary, monotonous phraseology, and incompetent alliterative technique. Verdicts such as these left critics hovering somewhere between two extremes: a technically faltering composition by

4725-414: The word as a Christian coinage, deriving its first syllable from Latin mundus 'world' and -spill- (more conventionally) from a Germanic root meaning 'destruction'. Scholarly consensus on the word's origin and meaning is unsettled. There is, however, agreement that as a title, it fails to match the poem's principal theme: the fate of souls after death. Von Steinmeyer (1892) described the Muspilli as

4800-418: The word denotes a person or some other entity. Distinctively, Kolb took uora as a local preposition ('in front of'), with muspilli signifying the Last Judgment itself, or perhaps its location or its presiding Judge. Related forms are found in two other Germanic languages. The Old Saxon Christian poem Heliand (early or mid 9th century) presents (and perhaps personifies) mudspelli ( mutspelli ) as

4875-483: The work's pastoral function as an admonitory sermon. Publishing in 1977 views which he had formulated some 20 years earlier, Wolfgang Mohr saw older poetic material here being re-worked with interpolations, as a warning to all, but especially the rich and powerful. Haug analysed the surviving text using a new method. Characterising it as a 'montage' and a 'somewhat fortuitous' constellation, he focused on its discontinuities, its 'open form', viewing it as an expression of

4950-430: The work's theological and mythological sources, to reconstruct its antecedents and genesis, and to identify its oldest, pre-Christian elements. Apart from the Bible, no single work has come to light which could have functioned as a unique source for our poem. For Neckel Muspilli was patently a Christian poem, but with vestiges still of pagan culture. Seeking analogues, Neckel was struck, for example, by similarities between

5025-431: The work. Most of the poem is in alliterative verse of very uneven quality. Some lines contain rhymes, using a poetic form pioneered in the ninth century by Otfrid of Weissenburg ( c.  790–875 ). This formal unevenness has often led scholars to regard the surviving text as a composite made up of older material and younger accretions – an impression reinforced by the poem's thematic and stylistic diversity. But it

5100-584: Was a German philologist . He studied philology at the University of Berlin , and from 1870 worked as an assistant in the private state archives in Berlin. In 1873 he was named an associate professor at the University of Strasbourg , and in 1877 became a full professor of German philology at the University of Erlangen . From 1874 to 1890 he was the editor of the Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum . He

5175-549: Was closure enough. Through Christ's sacrifice, Divine justice gives penitents hope for mercy. But in many accounts the sight of the Cross and of Christ's wounds also had a negative effect, as a terrible reminder to sinners of their ingratitude. In any case, the outcome of the Final Judgment has yet to be depicted. The 'tension between the roles of Christ as Judge and as Saviour has surely reached its climax, but not yet its dénouement and resolution'. We should not assume that in

5250-521: Was commissioned to plan a representative building for the court- and state library. The original plan was to erect the building at Ludwigstrasse 1. In 1828 the plot opposite the Glyptothek on Königsplatz was chosen as location, but later in the same year the planners switched back again to Ludwigstrasse. The blueprints were completed in 1831. For lack of funds the laying of the foundation stone had to be postponed to 8 July 1832. The construction work on

5325-421: Was destroyed. The reconstruction of the library building and the reintegration of evacuated holdings started in 1946. The books were destroyed on two occasions; the first time 400,000 items were lost including 140,000 theses, and the second time 100,000 unspecified items. Of the books that have been lost (about 380,000), a third or 118,800 have been recovered or repurchased to the present (2020). From 1953 to 1966

5400-409: Was first administrated and organised by the physician Samuel Quichelberg from Antwerp. He had adopted the shelving system of the Augsburg court library. Later the collection was administered by the librarian Wolfgang Prommer, who had catalogued the collection both alphabetically and according to keywords. Aegidius Oertel from Nuremberg became the first librarian in 1561. The main users of the library were

5475-462: Was most explicitly stated in line 57: Rejecting this interpretation, Finger saw no legal implications whatever in this line: Bavarian legal sources offer no proof of regular oath-taking by kinsmen , and in the passage quoted above, leuda (a Frankish form) means 'tribe' or 'people' (not precisely 'kin'). Lines 63–72 are directly critical of the judiciary, specifically the taking of bribes. Corrupt judges were frequently censured, and there

5550-399: Was much pressure for judicial reform. The Muspilli emerges from Finger's study as strongly partisan polemic, critical of popular law as practised in county courts ( Grafsgerichte ), and supportive of Carolingian legal reforms, to the extent of using concepts and terms typical of Frankish royal court procedures in its depiction of the Last Judgment. Finger concluded that the author was probably

5625-467: Was passing into discredit, Schneider was nonetheless insistent that, until all potential Christian sources had been exhausted, we should not assume that anything still left unexplained must be of pagan Germanic origin or the poet's own invention. Schneider himself saw the poem as solidly Christian, apart from the mysterious word muspille . Commentators have long been troubled by breaks in the poem's thematic sequence, especially between lines 36 and 37, where

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