Part 36

KRIEMHILD (_Grîmhild_), the heroine of the Nibelungenlied and wife of the hero Siegfried. The name (from O. H. Ger. _grîma_, 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 Dancrât and Queen Uote, and sister of the Burgundian kings Gunther, Giselhêr and Gêrnôt, 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. Hildikô). 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 Hildikô is the diminutive of Hilda or Hild, which again--in accordance with a custom common enough--may have been used as an abbreviation of Grîmhild (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 Grîmhild, 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 Grîmhild slays her husband Attila in revenge for her brothers, is preserved in the Norse tradition, though Grîmhild's part is played by Gudrun, a change probably due to the fact, mentioned above, that the name Grîmhild still retained in the north its sinister significance. The name of Grîmhild 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 Molière, 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.)

KRISHNAGAR, a town of British India, headquarters of Nadia district in Bengal, situated on the left bank of the river Jalangi and connected with Ranaghat, on the Eastern Bengal railway, by a light railway. Pop. (1901), 24,547. It is the residence of the raja of Nadia and contains a government college. Coloured clay figures are manufactured.

KRISTIANSTAD (CHRISTIANSTAD), a port of Sweden, chief town of the district (_län_) of Kristianstad, on a peninsula in Lake Sjövik, an expansion of the river Helge, 10 m. from the Baltic. Pop. (1900), 10,318. Its harbour, custom-house, &c., are at Åhus at the mouth of the river. It is among the first twelve manufacturing towns of Sweden as regards value of output, having engineering works, flour-mills, distilleries, weaving mills and sugar factories. Granite and wood-pulp are exported, and coal and grain imported. The town is the seat of the court of appeal for the provinces of Skane and Blekinge. It was founded and fortified in 1614 by Christian IV. of Denmark, who built the fine ornate church. The town was ceded to Sweden in 1658, retaken by Christian V. in 1676, and again acquired by Sweden in 1678.

KRIVOY ROG, a town of south Russia, in the government of Kherson, on the Ingulets River, near the station of the same name on the Ekaterinoslav railway, 113 m. S.W. of the city of Ekaterinoslav. Pop. (1900), about 10,000. It is the centre of a district very rich in minerals, obtained from a narrow stretch of crystalline schists underlying the Tertiary deposits. Iron ores (60 to 70% of iron), copper ores, colours, brown coal, graphite, slate, and lithographic stone are obtained--nearly 2,000,000 tons of iron ore annually.

KROCHMAL, NAHMAN (1785-1840), Jewish scholar, was born at Brody in Galicia in 1785. He was one of the pioneers in the revival of Jewish learning which followed on the age of Moses Mendelssohn. His chief work was the _Moreh Nebuche hazeman_ ("Guide for the Perplexed of the Age"), a title imitated from that of the 12th-century "Guide for the Perplexed" of Maimonides (q.v.). This book was not published till after the author's death, when it was edited by Zunz (1851). The book is a philosophy of Jewish history, and has a double importance. On the one side it was a critical examination of the Rabbinic literature and much influenced subsequent investigators. On the other side, Krochmal, in the words of N. Slouschz, "was the first Jewish scholar who views Judaism, not as a distinct and independent entity, but as a part of the whole of civilization." Krochmal, under Hegelian influences, regarded the nationality of Israel as consisting in its religious genius, its spiritual gifts. Thus Krochmal may be called the originator of the idea of the mission of the Jewish people, "cultural Zionism" as it has more recently been termed. He died at Tarnopol in 1840.

See S. Schechter, _Studies in Judaism_ (1896), pp. 56 seq.; N. Slouschz, _Renascence of Hebrew Literature_ (1909), pp. 63 seq. (I. A.)

KRONENBERG, a town of Germany in the Prussian Rhine Province, 6 m. S.W. from Elberfeld, with which it is connected by railway and by an electric tramway line. Pop. (1905), 11,340. It is a scattered community, consisting of an agglomeration of seventy-three different hamlets. It has a Roman Catholic and two Protestant churches, a handsome modern town-hall and considerable industries, consisting mainly of steel and iron manufactures.

KRONSTADT or CRONSTADT, a strongly fortified seaport town of Russia, the chief naval station of the Russian fleet in the northern seas, and the seat of the Russian admiralty. Pop. (1867), 45,115; (1897), 59,539. It is situated on the island of Kotlin, near the head of the Gulf of Finland, 20 m. W. of St Petersburg, of which it is the chief port, in 59° 59´ 30´´ N. and 29° 46´ 30´´ E. Kronstadt, always strong, has been thoroughly refortified on modern principles. The old "three-decker" forts, five in number, which formerly constituted the principal defences of the place, and defied the Anglo-French fleets during the Crimean War, are now of secondary importance. From the plans of Todleben a new fort, Constantine, and four batteries were constructed (1856-1871) to defend the principal approach, and seven batteries to cover the shallower northern channel. All these modern fortifications are low and thickly armoured earthworks, powerfully armed with heavy Krupp guns in turrets. The town itself is surrounded with an _enceinte_. The island of Kotlin, or Kettle (Finn., _Retusari_, or Rat Island) in general outline forms an elongated triangle, 7½ m. in length by about 1 in breadth, with its base towards St Petersburg. The eastern or broad end is occupied by the town of Kronstadt, and shoals extend for a mile and a half from the western point of the island to the rock on which the Tolbaaken lighthouse is built. The island thus divides the seaward approach to St Petersburg into two channels; that on the northern side is obstructed by shoals which extend across it from Kotlin to Lisynos on the Finnish mainland, and is only passable by vessels drawing less than 15 ft. of water; the southern channel, the highway to the capital, is narrowed by a spit which projects from opposite Oranienbaum on the Russian mainland, and, lying close to Kronstadt, has been strongly guarded by batteries. The approach to the capital has been greatly facilitated by the construction in 1875-1885 of a canal, 23 ft. deep, through the shallows. The town of Kronstadt is built on level ground, and is thus exposed to inundations, from one of which it suffered in 1824. On the south side of the town there are three harbours--the large western or merchant harbour, the western flank of which is formed by a great mole joining the fortifications which traverse the breadth of the island on this side; the middle harbour, used chiefly for fitting out and repairing vessels; and the eastern or war harbour for vessels of the Russian navy. The Peter and Catherine canals, communicating with the merchant and middle harbours, traverse the town. Between them stood the old Italian palace of Prince Menshikov, the site of which is now occupied by the pilot school. Among other public buildings are the naval hospital, the British seaman's hospital (established in 1867), the civic hospital, admiralty (founded 1785), arsenal, dockyards and foundries, school of marine engineering, the cathedral of St Andrew, and the English church. The port is ice-bound for 140 to 160 days in the year, from the beginning of December till April. A very large proportion of the inhabitants are sailors, and large numbers of artisans are employed in the dockyards. Kronstadt was founded in 1710 by Peter the Great, who took the island of Kotlin from the Swedes in 1703, when the first fortifications were constructed. (P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)

KROONSTAD, a town of Orange River Colony, 127 m. by rail N.E. of Bloemfontein and 130 m. S.W. of Johannesburg. Pop. (1904), 7191, of whom 3708 were whites. Kroonstad lies 4489 ft. above the sea and is built on the banks of the Valsch River, a perennial tributary of the Vaal. It is a busy town, being the centre of a rich agricultural district and of the diamond and coal-mining industry of the north-western parts of the colony. It is also a favourite residential place and resort of visitors from Johannesburg. It enjoys a healthy climate, affords opportunities for boating rare in South Africa, and boasts a golf-links. The principal building is the Dutch Reformed church in the centre of the market square.

On the capture of Bloemfontein by the British during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 Kroonstad was chosen by the Orange Free State Boers as the capital of the state, a dignity it held from the 13th of March to the 11th of May 1900. On the following day the town was occupied by Lord Roberts. The linking of the town in 1906 with the Natal system made the route via Kroonstad the shortest railway connexion between Cape Town and Durban. Another line goes N.W. from Kroonstad to Klerksdorp, passing (17 miles) the Lace diamond mine and (45 miles) the coal mines at Vierfontein.

KROPOTKIN, PETER ALEXEIVICH, PRINCE (1842- ), Russian geographer, author and revolutionary, was born at Moscow in 1842. His father, Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, belonged to the old Russian nobility; his mother, the daughter of a general in the Russian army, had remarkable literary and liberal tastes. At the age of fifteen Prince Peter Kropotkin, who had been designed by his father for the army, entered the Corps of Pages at St Petersburg (1857). Only a hundred and fifty boys--mostly children of the nobility belonging to the court--were educated in this privileged corps, which combined the character of a military school endowed with special rights and of a Court institution attached to the imperial household. Here he remained till 1862, reading widely on his own account, and giving special attention to the works of the French encyclopaedists and to modern French history. Before he left Moscow Prince Kropotkin had developed an interest in the condition of the Russian peasantry, and this interest increased as he grew older. The years 1857-1861 witnessed a rich growth in the intellectual forces of Russia, and Kropotkin came under the influence of the new Liberal-revolutionary literature, which indeed largely expressed his own aspirations. In 1862 he was promoted from the Corps of Pages to the army. The members of the corps had the prescriptive right of choosing the regiment to which they would be attached. Kropotkin had never wished for a military career, but, as he had not the means to enter the St Petersburg University, he elected to join a Siberian Cossack regiment in the recently annexed Amur district, where there were prospects of administrative work. For some time he was aide de camp to the governor of Transbaikalia at Chita, subsequently being appointed attaché for Cossack affairs to the governor-general of East Siberia at Irkutsk. Opportunities for administrative work, however, were scanty, and in 1864 Kropotkin accepted charge of a geographical survey expedition, crossing North Manchuria from Transbaikalia to the Amur, and shortly afterwards was attached to another expedition which proceeded up the Sungari River into the heart of Manchuria. Both these expeditions yielded most valuable geographical results. The impossibility of obtaining any real administrative reforms in Siberia now induced Kropotkin to devote himself almost entirely to scientific exploration, in which he continued to be highly successful. In 1867 he quitted the army and returned to St Petersburg, where he entered the university, becoming at the same time secretary to the physical geography section of the Russian Geographical Society. In 1873 he published an important contribution to science, a map and paper in which he proved that the existing maps of Asia entirely misrepresented the physical formation of the country, the main structural lines being in fact from south-west to north-east, not from north to south, or from east to west as had been previously supposed. In 1871 he explored the glacial deposits of Finland and Sweden for the Russian Geographical Society, and while engaged in this work was offered the secretaryship of that society. But by this time he had determined that it was his duty not to work at fresh discoveries but to aid in diffusing existing knowledge among the people at large, and he accordingly refused the offer, and returned to St Petersburg, where he joined the revolutionary party. In 1872 he visited Switzerland, and became a member of the International Workingmen's Association at Geneva. The socialism of this body was not, however, advanced enough for his views, and after studying the programme of the more violent Jura Federation at Neuchâtel and spending some time in the company of the leading members, he definitely adopted the creed of anarchism (q.v.) and, on returning to Russia, took an active part in spreading the nihilist propaganda. In 1874 he was arrested and imprisoned, but escaped in 1876 and went to England, removing after a short stay to Switzerland, where he joined the Jura Federation. In 1877 he went to Paris, where he helped to start the socialist movement, returning to Switzerland in 1878, where he edited for the Jura Federation a revolutionary newspaper, _Le Révolté_, subsequently also publishing various revolutionary pamphlets. Shortly after the assassination of the tsar Alexander II. (1881) Kropotkin was expelled from Switzerland by the Swiss government, and after a short stay at Thonon (Savoy) went to London, where he remained for nearly a year, returning to Thonon towards the end of 1882. Shortly afterwards he was arrested by the French government, and, after a trial at Lyons, sentenced by a police-court magistrate (under a special law passed on the fall of the Commune) to five years' imprisonment, on the ground that he had belonged to the International Workingmen's Association (1883). In 1886 however, as the result of repeated agitation on his behalf in the French Chamber, he was released, and settled near London.

Prince Kropotkin's authority as a writer on Russia is universally acknowledged, and he has contributed largely to the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. Among his other works may be named _Paroles d'un révolté_ (1884); _La Conquête du pain_ (1888); _L'Anarchie: sa philosophie, son idéal_ (1896); _The State, its Part in History_ (1898); _Fields, Factories and Workshops_ (1899); _Memoirs of a Revolutionist_ (1900); _Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution_ (1902); _Modern Science and Anarchism_ (Philadelphia, 1903); _The Desiccation of Asia_ (1904); The Orography of Asia (1904); and _Russian Literature_ (1905).

KROTOSCHIN (in Polish, _Krotoszyn_), a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Posen, 32 m. S.E. of Posen. Pop. (1900), 12,373. It has three churches, a synagogue, steam saw-mills, and a steam brewery, and carries on trade in grain and seeds. The castle of Krotoschin is the chief place of a mediatized principality which was formed in 1819 out of the domains of the Prussian crown and was granted to the prince of Thurn and Taxis in compensation for the relinquishment by him of the monopoly of the Prussian postal system, formerly held by his family.