sort of similarity in form to this but little if any significance can
be attached.

And if the internal evidence is thin, the external is invisible,
except for the fact that Loeben's ballad was published by Brockhaus,
whom Heine knew by correspondence. But between the years 1818 and
1847, Heine never published anything in _Urania_,[57] which was used
by so many of his contemporaries. Heine and Loeben never knew each
other personally, and between the years 1821 and 1823 they were never
regionally close together.[58] Heine never mentions Loeben in his
letters; nor does he refer to him in his creative works, despite the
fact that he had a habit of alluding to his brothers in Apollo, even
in his poems.[59]

And therefore, though it is fashionable to say that Heine knew
Loeben's ballad in 1823, and though the contention is plausible, it is
impossible to prove it. Impossible also for this reason: Karl Simrock,
Heine's intimate friend, included in his _Rheinsagen_ (1836, 1837,
1841)[60] the ballads on the Lorelei by Brentano, Eichendorff, Heine,
and himself. Why did he exclude the one by Loeben? He made an ardent
appeal in his preface to his colleagues to inform him of any other
ballads that had been written on these themes. The question must be
referred to those who like to skate on flabby ice in things literary.

The most plausible theory in regard to the source of Heine's ballad is
the one proposed by Oscar F. Walzel, who says: "Heine hat den Stoff
wahrscheinlich aus dem ihm wohlbekannten _Handbuch für Reisende am
Rhein_ von Aloys Schreiber übernommen."[61] The only proof that Walzel
gives that Heine knew Schreiber's manual is a reference[62] to it in
_Lutetia_. But this was written in 1843, and proves nothing as to