1880, and a monument without his name but in his memory (sometimes erroneously supposed to mark the place where an old gibbet was) stands on the top of Hindhead.
See E. Manson, Builders of our Law (1904).
ERLKÖNIG, or Erl-King, a mythical character in modern
German literature, represented as a gigantic bearded man with
a golden crown and trailing garments, who carries children away
to that undiscovered country where he himself abides. There
is no such personage in ancient German mythology, and the name
is linguistically nothing more than the perpetuation of a blunder.
It first appeared in Herder’s Stimmen der Völker (1778), where
it is used in the translation of the Danish song of the Elf-King’s
Daughter as equivalent to the Danish ellerkonge, or ellekonge,
that is, elverkonge, the king of the elves; and the true German
word would have been Elbkönig or Elbenkönig, afterwards used
under the modified form of Elfenkönig by Wieland in his Oberon
(1780). Herder was probably misled by the fact that the Danish
word elle signifies not only elf, but also alder tree (Ger. Erle).
His mistake at any rate has been perpetuated by both English
and French translators, who speak of a “king of the alders,”
“un roi des aunes,” and find an explanation of the myth in the
tree-worship of early times, or in the vapoury emanations that
hang like weird phantoms round the alder trees at night. The
legend was adopted by Goethe as the subject of one of his finest
ballads, rendered familiar to English readers by the translations
of Lewis and Sir Walter Scott; and since then it has been treated
as a musical theme by Reichardt and Schubert.
ERMAN, PAUL (1764–1851), German physicist, was born in
Berlin on the 29th of February 1764. He was the son of the
historian Jean Pierre Erman (1735–1814), author of Histoire des
réfugiés. He became teacher of science successively at the French
gymnasium in Berlin, and at the military academy, and on the
foundation of the university of Berlin in 1810 he was chosen
professor of physics. He died at Berlin on the 11th of October
1851. His work was mainly concerned with electricity and
magnetism, though he also made some contributions to optics
and physiology. His son, Georg Adolf Erman (1806–1877),
was born in Berlin on the 12th of May 1806, and after studying
natural science at Berlin and Königsberg, spent from 1828 to
1830 in a journey round the world, an account of which he published
in Reise um die Erde durch Nordasien und die beiden
Ozeane (1833–1848). The magnetic observations he made during
his travels were utilized by C. F. Gauss in his theory of terrestrial
magnetism. He was appointed professor of physics at Berlin
in 1839, and died there on the 12th of July 1877. From 1841
to 1865 he edited the Archiv für wissenschaftliche Kunde von
Russland, and in 1874 he published, with H. J. R. Petersen,
Die Grundlagen der Gauss’schen Theorie und die Erscheinungen
des Erdmagnetismus im Jahre 1829.
His son Johann Peter Adolf Erman (1854– ), a famous Egyptologist, was born in Berlin on the 31st of October 1854. Educated at Leipzig and Berlin, he became extraordinary professor in 1883 and ordinary professor in 1892 of Egyptology in the university of Berlin, and in 1885 he was appointed director of the Egyptian department of the royal museum. For an account of the Egyptological work of Erman and his school, see Egypt: Language.
ERMANARIC (fl. 350–376), king of the East Goths, belonged
to the Amali family, and was the son of Achiulf. His name
occurs as Ermanaricus (Jordanes), Aírmanareiks (Gothic),
Eormenríc (A. Sax.), Jörmunrek (Norse), Ermenrîch (M.H.
German). Ermanaric built up for himself a vast kingdom, which
eventually extended from the Danube to the Baltic and from
the Don to the Theiss. He drove the Vandals out of Dacia,
compelled the allegiance of the neighbouring tribes of West
Goths, procured the submission of the Herules, of many Slav
and Finnish tribes, and even of the Esthonians on the shores
of the Gulf of Bothnia. In his later days the west Goths threw
off his yoke, and, on the invasion of the Huns, rather than
witness the downfall of his kingdom he is said by Ammianus
Marcellinus to have committed suicide. His fate early became
the centre of popular tradition, which found its way into the
narrative of Jordanes or Jornandes (De rebus geticis, chap. 24),
who compared him to Alexander the Great and certainly exaggerated
the extent of his kingdom. He is there said to have
caused a certain Sunilda or Sanielh to be torn asunder by wild
horses on account of her husband’s traitorous conduct. Her
brothers Sarus and Ammius sought to avenge her. They
succeeded in wounding, not in killing the Gothic king, whose
death supervened in his one hundred and tenth year from the
joint effects of his wound and fear of the Hunnish invasion. This
is evidently a paraphrase of popular story which sought to supply
plausible reasons for Ermanaric’s end. In German legend
Ermanaric became the typical cruel tyrant, and references to
his crimes abound in German epic and in Anglo-Saxon poetry.
He is made to replace Odoacer as the enemy of Dietrich of Bern,
his nephew, and his history is related in the Norse Vilkina or
Thidrekssagà, which chiefly embodies German tradition. His
evil genius, Sifka, Sibicho or Bicci, brings about the death of his
three sons. The Harlungs, Imbrecke and Fritile,[1] are his nephews,
whom he has strangled for the sake of their treasure, the Brîsingo
meni. Sonhild or Svanhild becomes the wife of Ermanaric,
and the motive for her murder is replaced by an accusation of
adultery between Svanhild and her stepson. The story was
already connected with the Nibelungen when it found its way
to the Scandinavian north by way of Germany. In the Völsunga
Saga Svanhild is the daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun. She is
given in marriage to the Gothic king Jörmunrek (Ermanaric),
who sends his son Randver as proxy wooer in company of Bicci,
the evil counsellor. Randver is persuaded by Bicci to take his
father’s bride for himself. Randver is hanged and Svanhild
trampled to death by horses in the gate of the castle. Gudrun
eggs on Sörli and Hamdir or Hamtheow, her two sons by her
third husband, Jonakr the Hun, to avenge their sister. On the
way they slay their half-brother Erp, whom they suspect of
lukewarmness in the cause; arrived in the hall of Ermanaric
they make a great slaughter of the Goths, and hew off the hands
and feet of Ermanaric, but they themselves are slain with stones.
The tale is told with variations by Saxo Grammaticus (Historia
Danica, ed. Müller, p. 408, &c.), and in the Icelandic poems, the
Lay of Hamtheow, Gudrun’s Chain of Woe, and in the prose Edda.
Bibliography.—W. Grimm, in Die deutsche Heldensage (2nd ed., Berlin, 1867), quotes the account given by Jordanes, references in Beowulf, in the Wanderer’s Song, Exeter Book, in Parcival, in Dietrichs Flucht, the account given in the Quedlinburg Chronicle, by Ekkehard in the Chronicon Urspergense, by Saxo Grammaticus, &c. See also Vigfússon and Powell, Corpus poëticum boreale, vol. i. (Oxford, 1883), and H. Symons, “Die deutsche Heldensage” in Paul’s Grundriss d. german. Phil. vol. iii. (Strassburg, 1900).
ERMELAND, or Ermland (Varmia), a district of Germany,
in East Prussia, extending from the Frisches Haff, a bay in the
Baltic, inland towards the Polish frontier. It is a well-wooded
sandy tract of country, has an area of about 1650 sq. m., a
population of 240,000, and is divided into the districts of Braunsberg,
Heilsberg, Rössel and Allenstein.
Ermeland was originally one of the eleven districts of old Prussia and was occupied by the Teutonic Knights (Deutscher Orden), being made in 1250 one of the four bishoprics of the country under their sway. The bishop of Ermeland shortly afterwards declared himself independent of the order, and became a prince of the Empire. In 1466 Ermeland, together with West Prussia, was by the peace of Thorn attached to the crown of Poland, and the bishop had a seat in the Polish senate. In 1772 it was again incorporated with Prussia. Among the bishops of the see, which still exists, with its seat in Frauenberg, may be mentioned Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II., and Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius (1504–1579), the founder of the Jesuit college in Braunsberg.
See Hipler, Literaturgeschichte des Bisthums Ermeland (Braunsberg, 1873); the Monumenta historiae Warmiensis (Mainz, 1860–1864, and Braunsberg, 1866–1872, 4 vols.); and Buchholz, Abriss einer Geschichte des Ermlands (Braunsberg, 1903.)
- ↑ Emerka and Fridla (Beowulf, Quedlingburg Chron.), Aki and Etgard (Vilkina Saga). In the original myth the Harlungs, who are not to be confused with the Hartung brothers, were sent to bring home Sūryā, the bride of the sky-god, Irmintiu.
