page_title: Lorelei
section_title: Original folklore and modern myth
hierarchical_section_title: Lorelei / Original folklore and modern myth
caption_attribution_description: Ernst Herter (1846–1917) &#160;Description German sculptor Date of birth/death14 May 184619 December 1917Location of birth/deathBerlinBerlinWork locationBerlinAuthority control VIAF: 77111692 LCCN: n87129740 GND: 118774247 ULAN: 500267506 ISNI: 0000 0001 2102 5176 WorldCat Deutsch: Heinrich-Heine-Denkmal in der Bronx, New York. Es wurde von Ernst Herter gemeißelt, nachdem es von Kaiserin Elisabeth von Österreich im Jahre 1888 in Auftrag gegeben wurde.
context_page_description: The Lorelei, also spelled Loreley in German, is a 132 m high, steep slate rock on the right bank of the River Rhine in the Rhine Gorge at Sankt Goarshausen in Germany. The Loreley Amphitheatre on top of the rock is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
context_section_description: The rock and the murmur it creates have inspired various tales. An old legend envisioned dwarfs living in caves in the rock.
  In 1801, German author Clemens Brentano composed his ballad Zu Bacharach am Rheine as part of a fragmentary continuation of his novel Godwi oder Das steinerne Bild der Mutter. It first told the story of an enchanting female associated with the rock. In the poem, the beautiful Lore Lay, betrayed by her sweetheart, is accused of bewitching men and causing their death. Rather than sentence her to death, the bishop consigns her to a nunnery. On the way thereto, accompanied by three knights, she comes to the Lorelei rock. She asks permission to climb it and view the Rhine once again. She does so and thinking that she sees her love in the Rhine, falls to her death; the rock still retained an echo of her name afterwards. Brentano had taken inspiration from Ovid and the Echo myth.
  In 1824, Heinrich Heine seized on and adapted Brentano's theme in one of his most famous poems, "Die Lorelei". It describes the eponymous female as a sort of siren who, sitting on the cliff above the Rhine and combing her golden hair, unwittingly distracted shipmen with her beauty and song, causing them to crash on the rocks. In 1837 Heine's lyrics were set to music by Friedrich Silcher in the art song "Lorelei" that became well known in German-speaking lands. A setting by Franz Liszt was also favored and dozens of other musicians have set the poem to music. During the Nazi regime and World War II, Heinrich Heine (born as a Jew) became discredited as author of the lyrics, in an effort to dismiss and hide Jewish contribution to German art. 
  The Lorelei character, although originally imagined by Brentano, passed into German popular culture in the form described in the Heine–Silcher song and is commonly but mistakenly believed to have originated in an old folk tale. The French writer Guillaume Apollinaire took up the theme again in his poem "La Loreley", from the collection Alcools which is later cited in Symphony No. 14 (3rd movement) of Dmitri Shostakovich.
caption: Lorelei Monument by Ernst Herter, a Heinrich Heine memorial in the Bronx, New York City
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