It contains a valuable library with many incunabula and old manuscripts, amongst which is one of the Nibelungenlied, an astronomical observatory, a collection of antiquities, and a mineral collection.
The epic of Gudrun is not unworthy to stand beside the greater Nibelungenlied, and it has been aptly compared with it as the Odyssey to the Iliad.
Like the Odyssey, Gudrun is an epic of the sea, a story of adventure; it does not turn solely round the conflict of human passions; nor is it built up round one all-absorbing, all-dominating idea like the Nibelungenlied.
It was a severe trial to Wagner not to hear his own work, but he knew that it was in good hands, and he responded to Liszt's appeal for a new creation by studying the Nibelungenlied and gradually shaping it into a gigantic tetralogy.
In his literature it has played a prominent part from the Nibelungenlied to the present day; and its weird and romantic legends have been alternately the awe and the delight of his childhood.