KREUZBURG

kreuzburg, a town of germany, in the prussian province of silesia, on the stober, 24 m. n.n.e. of oppeln. pop. (1905), 10,919. it has an evangelical and a roman catholic church, a gymnasium and a teacher's seminary. here are flour-mills, distilleries, iron-works, breweries, and manufactories of sugar and of machinery. kreuzburg, which became a town in 1252, was the birthplace of the novelist gustav freytag. kreuznach (_creuznach_), a town and watering-place of germany, in the prussian rhine province, situated on the nahe, a tributary of the rhine, 9 m. by rail s. of bingerbruck. pop. (1900), 21,321. it consists of the old town on the right bank of the river, the new town on the left, and the bade insel (bath island), connected by a fine stone bridge. the town has two evangelical and three roman catholic churches, a gymnasium, a commercial school and a hospital. there is a collection of roman and medieval antiquities, among which is preserved a fine roman mosaic discovered in 1893. on the bade insel is the kurhaus (1872) and also the chief spring, the elisabethquelle, impregnated with iodine and bromine, and prescribed for scrofulous, bronchial and rheumatic disorders. the chief industries are marble-polishing and the manufacture of leather, glass and tobacco. vines are cultivated on the neighbouring hills, and there is a trade in wine and corn. the earliest mention of the springs of kreuznach occurs in 1478, but it was only in the early part of the 19th century that dr prieger, to whom there is a statue in the town, brought them into prominence. now the annual number of visitors amounts to several thousands. kreuznach was evidently a roman town, as the ruins of a roman fortification, the heidenmauer, and various antiquities have been found in its immediate neighbourhood. in the 9th century it was known as cruciniacum, and it had a palace of the carolingian kings. in 1065 the emperor henry iv. presented it to the bishopric of spires; in the 13th century it obtained civic privileges and passed to the counts of sponheim; in 1416 it became part of the palatinate. the town was ceded to prussia in 1814. in 1689 the french reduced the strong castle of kauzenberg to the ruin which now stands on a hill above kreuznach. see schneegans, _historisch-topographische beschreibung kreuznachs und seiner umgebung_ (7th ed., 1904); engelmann, _kreuznach und seine heilquellen_ (8th ed., 1890); and stabel, _das solbad kreuznach fur arzte dargestellt_ (kreuznach, 1887). kriegspiel (kriegsspiel), the original german name, still used to some extent in england, for the war game (q.v.). kriemhild (_grimhild_), the heroine of the nibelungenlied and wife of the hero siegfried. the name (from o. h. ger. _grima_, a mask or helm, and _hiltja_ or _hilta_, war) means "the masked warrior woman," and has been taken to prove her to have been originally a mythical, daemonic figure, an impersonation of the powers of darkness and of death. in the north, indeed, the name _grimhildr_ continued to have a purely mythical character and to be applied only to daemonic beings; but in germany, the original home of the nibelungen myth, it certainly lost all trace of this significance, and in the _nibelungenlied_ kriemhild is no more than a beautiful princess, the daughter of king dancrat and queen uote, and sister of the burgundian kings gunther, giselher and gernot, the masters of the nibelungen hoard. as she appears in the nibelungen legend, however, kriemhild would seem to have an historical origin, as the wife of attila, king of the huns, as well as sister of the nibelung kings. according to jordanes (c. 49), who takes his information from the contemporary and trustworthy account of priscus, attila died of a violent hemorrhage at night, as he lay beside a girl named ildico (i.e. o. h. ger. hildiko). the story got abroad that he had perished by the hand of a woman in revenge for her relations slain by him; according to some (e.g. saxo poeta and the quedlinburg chronicle) it was her father whom she revenged; but when the treacherous overthrow of the burgundians by attila had become a theme for epic poets, she figured as a burgundian princess, and her act as done in revenge for her brothers. now the name hildiko is the diminutive of hilda or hild, which again--in accordance with a custom common enough--may have been used as an abbreviation of grimhild (cf. _hildr_ for _brynhildr_). it has been suggested (symons, _heldensage_, p. 55) that when the legend of the overthrow of the burgundians, which took place in 437, became attached to that of the death of attila (453), hild, the supposed sister of the burgundian kings, was identified with the daemonic grimhild, the sister of the mythical nibelung brothers, and thus helped the process by which the nibelung myth became fused with the historical story of the fall of the burgundian kingdom. the older story, according to which grimhild slays her husband attila in revenge for her brothers, is preserved in the norse tradition, though grimhild's part is played by gudrun, a change probably due to the fact, mentioned above, that the name grimhild still retained in the north its sinister significance. the name of grimhild is transferred to gudrun's mother, the "wise wife," a semi-daemonic figure, who brews the potion that makes sigurd forget his love for brunhild and his plighted troth. in the _nibelungenlied_, however, the primitive supremacy of the blood-tie has given place to the more modern idea of the supremacy of the passion of love, and kriemhild marries attila (etzel) in order to compass the death of her brothers, in revenge for the murder of siegfried. theodor abeling, who is disposed to reject or minimize the mythical origins, further suggests a confusion of the story of attila's wife ildico with that of the murder of sigimund the burgundian by the sons of chrothildis, wife of clovis. (see nibelungenlied.) see b. symons, _germanische heldensage_ (strassburg, 1905); f. zarnke, _das nibelungenlied_, p. ii. (leipzig, 1875); t. abeling, _einleitung in das nibelungenlied_ (freiburg-im-breisgau, 1909). (w. a. p.) kriloff (or kruilov), ivan andreevich (1768-1844), the great national fabulist of russia, was born on the 14th of february 1768, at moscow, but his early years were spent at orenburg and tver. his father, a distinguished military officer, died in 1779; and young kriloff was left with no richer patrimony than a chest of old books, to be brought up by the exertions of a heroic mother. in the course of a few years his mother removed to st petersburg, in the hope of securing a government pension; and there kriloff obtained a post in the civil service, but he gave it up immediately after his mother's death in 1788. already in 1783 he had sold to a bookseller a comedy of his own composition, and by this means had procured for himself the works of moliere, racine, boileau; and now, probably under the influence of these writers, he produced _philomela_ and _cleopatra_, which gave him access to the dramatic circle of knyazhin. several attempts he made to start a literary magazine met with little success; but, together with his plays, they served to make the author known in society. for about four years (1797-1801) kriloff lived at the country seats of prince sergius galitzin, and when the prince was appointed military governor of livonia he accompanied him as official secretary. of the years which follow his resignation of this post little is known, the common opinion being that he wandered from town to town under the influence of a passion for card-playing. before long he found his place as a fabulist, the first collection of his _fables_, 23 in number, appearing in 1809. from 1812 to 1841 he held a congenial appointment in the imperial public library--first as assistant, and then as head of the russian books department. he died on the 21st of november 1844. his statue in the summer garden is one of the finest monuments in st petersburg. honours were showered upon kriloff while he yet lived: the academy of sciences admitted him a member in 1811, and bestowed upon him its gold medal; in 1838 a great festival was held under imperial sanction to celebrate the jubilee of his first appearance as an author; and the emperor assigned him a handsome pension. before his death about 77,000 copies of his fables had found sale in russia; and his wisdom and humour had become the common possession of the many. he was at once poet and sage. his fables for the most part struck root in some actual event, and they told at once by their grip and by their beauty. though he began as a translator and imitator he soon showed himself a master of invention, who found abundant material in the life of his native land. to the russian ear his verse is of matchless quality; while word and phrase are direct, simple and eminently idiomatic, colour and cadence vary with the theme. a collected edition of kriloff's works appeared at st petersburg, 1844. of the numerous editions of his _fables_, which have been often translated, may be mentioned that illustrated by trutovski, 1872. the author's life has been written in russian by pletneff, by lebanoff and by grot, _liter, zhizn kruilova_. "materials" for his life are published in vol. vi. of the _sbornik statei_ of the literary department of the academy of sciences. w. r. s. ralston prefixed an excellent sketch to his english prose version of the _fables_ (1868; 2nd ed. 1871). another translation, by t. h. harrison, appeared in 1883. krishna (the dark one), an incarnation of vishnu, or rather the form in which vishnu himself is the most popular object of worship throughout northern india. in origin, krishna, like rama, was undoubtedly a deified hero of the kshatriya caste. in the older framework of the _mahabharata_ he appears as a great chieftain and ally of the pandava brothers; and it is only in the interpolated episode of the _bhagavad-gita_ that he is identified with vishnu and becomes the revealer of the doctrine of _bhakti_ or religious devotion. of still later date are the popular developments of the modern cult of krishna associated with radha, as found in the _vishnu purana_. here he is represented as the son of a king saved from a slaughter of the innocents, brought up by a cowherd, sporting with the milkmaids, and performing miraculous feats in his childhood. the scene is laid in the neighbourhood of muttra, on the right bank of the jumna, where the whole country to the present day is holy ground. another place associated with incidents of his later life is dwarka, the westernmost point in the peninsula of kathiawar. the two most famous preachers of krishna-worship and founders of sects in his honour were vallabha and chaitanya, both born towards the close of the 15th century. the followers of the former are now found chiefly in rajputana and gujarat. they are known as vallabhacharyas, and their _gosains_ or high priests as maharajas, to whom semi-divine honours are paid. the licentious practices of this sect were exposed in a lawsuit before the high court at bombay in 1862. chaitanya was the vaishnav reformer of bengal, with his home at nadiya. a third influential krishna-preacher of the 19th century was swami narayan, who was encountered by bishop heber in gujarat, where his followers at this day are numerous and wealthy. among the names of krishna are _gopal_, the cowherd; _gopinath_, the lord of the milkmaids; and _mathuranath_, the lord of muttra. his legitimate consort was rukmini, daughter of the king of berar; but radha is always associated with him in his temples. (see hinduism.)