Types of Variance in the Nibelung Tradition Some general Remarks

After the failure of Wilhelm Braune's attempt to reconstruct a stemma of the Nibelungen manuscripts, traditional textual criticism lead in a dead end, even though some valuable editions (Hennig, Schulze, Reichert, Heinzle) were published. As a result of the editions of the so-called >contaminated< manuscripts and a consequence of the easier access to the Nibelungen-fragments by digitalization, Nibelungen philology succeeded less and less to deal with the quantity of variants in the transmission of the text. The article proposes to distinguish three kinds of variants: First, variants due to a change in conception, a revision (for instance in the version *C). Secondly, variants based on errors in the process of transmission ( by mishearing, misreading, defects of the model etc.). Only these two kinds of variants are relevant for textual criticism and for the reconstruction of a genealogy of manuscripts in the Lachmannian tradition. Thirdly, variants of lexemes, in morphology, in grammar, in syntax, which do not permit to decide between >right< or >wrong<. It is the majority. These variants do not alter the sense of the text; they occur on all levels of transmission; the copier can use them ad libitum. They have to be excluded from textual criticism.