In 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Kingdom of Judah, and its capital, Jerusalem. The destruction of Jerusalem led to the Babylonian captivity as the city’s population, and people from the surrounding lands, were deported to Babylonia. The Jews thereafter referred to Nebuchadnezzar, the greatest enemy they had faced until that point, as a “destroyer of nations”. The Biblical Book of Jeremiah paints Nebuchadnezzar as a cruel enemy, but also as God‘s appointed ruler of the world and a divine instrument to punish disobedience. Through the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the first Temple of Solomon, the capture of the rebellious Phoenician city of Tyre, and other campaigns in the Levant, Nebuchadnezzar completed the Neo-Babylonian Empire’s transformation into the new great power of the ancient Near East.
Here, from the opera Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar) is the chorus of the hebrew slaves by Giuseppe Verdi
In Eisenach, Germany, in the early 13th century, the landgraves of the Thuringian Valley ruled the area of Germany around the Wartburg. They were great patrons of the arts, particularly music and poetry, holding contests between the minnesingers at the Wartburg. Across the valley towered the Venusberg, in whose interior, according to legend, dwelt Holda, the Goddess of Spring. In time, Holda became identified with Venus, the pagan Goddess of Love, whose grotto was the home of sirens and nymphs. It was said that the goddess would lure the Wartburg minnesinger-knights to her lair where her beauty would captivate them. The minnesinger-knight Heinrich von Ofterdingen, known as Tannhäuser, left the court of the Landgrave of Thuringia a year ago after a disagreement with his fellow knights. Since then he has been held as a willing captive through his love for Venus, in her grotto in the Venusberg.[24][15], He finally realised that such a life was amoral and changed his ways. The pilgrims celebrated his return to morality with this chorus: tannhauser pilgrims chorus, by Richard Wagner