And as to her personal appearance, Brentano and Loeben simply tell us that she was beautiful, Brentano employing the Homeric method of proving her beauty by its effects. Heine and Schreiber not only comment upon her physical beauty, they also tell us how she enhanced her natural charms by zealously attending to her hair and her jewelry and religiously guarding the color scheme in so doing. In brief, the similarity is so striking that, if we can prove that Heine knew Schreiber in 1823, we can definitely assert that Schreiber[65] was his main, if not his unique, source.
Let us take up the various arguments in favor of the contention that Heine knew Schreiber's Handbuch in 1823, beginning with the least convincing. If Heine read Loeben's ballad and saga in "_Urania_ für 1821," he could thereby have learned also of Schreiber's _Rheinsagen_, for, by a peculiar coincidence for our purpose, Brockhaus discusses[66] these in the introduction in connection with a tragedy by W. Usener, entitled Die Brüder, and based upon one of Schreiber's _Sagen_. Proof, then, that Heine knew Loeben in 1823 is almost proof that he also knew Schreiber.
But there is better proof than this. In Elementargeister[67], we find this sentence: "Ganz genau habe ich die Geschichte nicht im Kopfe; wenn ich nicht irre, wird sie in Schreibers _Rheinischen Sagen_ aufs umständlichste erzählt. Es ist die Sage vom Wisperthal, welches unweit Lorch am Rheine gelegen ist." And then Heine tells the same story that is told by Schreiber. It is the eighth of the seventeen _Sagen_ in question. This, then, is proof that Heine knew Schreiber so long before 1835 that he was no longer sure he could depend upon his memory. But it is impossible to say whether Heine's memory was good for twelve years, or more, or less.
But there is better evidence than this. Heine's _Der Rabbi von Bacharach_ reaches far back into his life. That he intended to write this sort of work before 1823 has been proved;[68] just when he actually began to write this particular work is not so clear, but we know that he did much preliminary reading by way of preparing himself for its composition. And the region around and above and below Bacharach comes in for detailed discussion and elaborate description in Schreiber's _Rheinsagen_. The crusades, the _Sankt-Wernerskirchen_, Lorch, the _Fischfang_, Hatto's _Mäuseturm_, the maelstrom at Bingen, the _Kedrich_, the story of the _Kecker Reuter_ who liberated the maid that had been abducted by dwarfs, and again, and this is irrefutable, the story "von dem wunderlicheft Wisperthale drüben, wo die Vögel ganz vernünftig sprechen," all of these and others play a large role in Schreiber's sagas and in Heine's _Rabbi_. No one can read Schreiber's _Handbuch_ and Heine's _Rabbi_ without being convinced that the former stood sponsor for the latter.