Mystic Signs on the Wall in the Basement of Ipatiev House?

[rskkiya]

The poem is Belsazar, by Heinrich Heine.  The lines are:

"Belsazar aber ward in selbiger Nacht
Von seinem Knechten umgebracht."

The word "Knechten" is akin to the English "knaves" and could be translated as retainers instead of slaves.  (The original connotation of "knave" was not negative, as it is today.)  In fact, the German word for slaves is "Sklaven".  A medieval knight's squire was called a "Knecht".

An interesting footnote . . . Heine was a very famous 19th-century poet who penned one of Germany's most iconic poems, Die Lorelei (The Loreley), taught to German school children for generations.  The Nazis tried to erase Heine's memory (he was Jewish), and all poetry books printed under their regime gave the author of this famous poem as "anonymous."

Thank you Tsarfan for the correction!

[Tsarfan]

Actually, I hadn't read this poem in years until these posts got me intrigued again . . . so I just dug it out.

The poem is about a king whose hubris rose to such a pitch that he set himself above all other concerns.  When the signs of his folly became obvious to all but him, his "Knechten" rose up and killed him.

The poem describes the "Knechten" as feasting in the King's hall and draining their goblets of wine . . . so this is definitely a reference to senior retainers (ministers and generals?), not to slaves or servants (revolutionaries?).

If those lines were written on the wall at the Ipatiev house to make a point about Nicholas' death, it was not the tale of a Jewish conspiracy.  It was the tale of how Nicholas was brought down by his refusal to deal with a situation that his ministers and generals saw far more clearly but could not get him to heed.

Whoever would have known this quote was certainly educated enough to have grasped the meaning of the poem.