ABSTRACT
Of all the German legends, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” has without doubt attained the greatest popularity, not only in the country of its origin but also in other European nations, as well as in the United States. Shortly after its seven-hundredth anniversary, scholars can look back upon a truly amazing amount of research attempting to solve the riddle of why 130 children left the town of Hamelin on 26 June 1284, and where they might possibly have gone. As early as the eighteenth century, Christoph Friedrich Fein attempted to find a solution to this sudden exodus of young people, in a short essay, 1 and since then there have appeared at least a dozen scholarly dissertations, monographs, and books, as well as numerous journal articles, all of which have investigated the origin, meaning, and history of this legend. 2 Above all, the studies of Willy Krogmann (1934), Wolfgang Wann (1949), Heinrich Spanuth (1951), and Hans Dobbertin (1970), have assembled a detailed account of the history of the legend. 3 With much philological skill they have explained the departure of the children of Hamelin and reinforced the conclusion that they were most probably led voluntarily or abducted forcefully to a new settlement in Moravia.
