Comment by MrBuddyCasino
5 years ago
tl;dr: the event refers probably to an emigration that really happened, and the pied piper might have been a recruiter to attract settlers to newly conquered lands near Berlin
5 years ago
tl;dr: the event refers probably to an emigration that really happened, and the pied piper might have been a recruiter to attract settlers to newly conquered lands near Berlin
The article suggests multiple other interpretations. That does seem to be the most accepted, although “probably” seems like the wrong word.
Jürgen Udolph - the researcher in Onomastics who has proposed the generally accepted theory - is well respected. The names of families and of places in that region northeast of Berlin resemble those from Hameln/Hamelin. However, he does not claim to have found the one true truth. A possible alternative is that both things happened - locators recruiting the younger generation around Hameln as well as the incident that became the story of the Pied Piper