Abstract
It is not by chance that the cover of the August 11, 1984 issue of The Economist portrayed a large, green-shaded picture of Hansel and Gretel with a beckoning witch under the caption, “West Germany’s Greens Meet the Wicked World.” Inside the magazine a special correspondent began his report:
Once upon a time (in the late 1960s), a hostile stepmother (West Germany’s Christian Democrats) and a kindly but weak father (the Social Democrats) decided that they had no room for children who thought for themselves. So they abandoned Hansel and Gretel (rebellious young West Germans) in a dense wood. Far from perishing, as their parents had expected, Hansel and Gretel became Greens. They quaked at the forest’s nuclear terrors and cherished its trees. Soon they spied a glittering gingerbread house at the Bundestag in a clearing. Being hungry, they ran inside. This was their first big test. For the house belonged to the wicked witch of the establishment.1
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Notes
In Jack Zipes, The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood (South Hadley MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1983), 256.
Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 50.
John Ellis, One Fairy Story Too Many (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 100.
See Martine Segalen, Mari et femme dans la société paysanne (Paris: Flammarion, 1980);
Reinhard Sieder, Sozialgeschichte der Familie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 12–72;
and James R. Farr, Artisans in Europe, 1300–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
In particular, see Heinz Rölleke, ed., Die älteste Märchensammlung der Brüder Grimm (Cologny-Geneva: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1975).
Donald Ward, “New Misconceptions about Old Folktales: The Brothers Grimm,” in The Brothers Grimm and Folktale, ed. James M. McGlathery (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 93.
Wilhelm Schoof, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Grimmschen Märchen (Hamburg: Hauswedell, 1959), 147.
Cf. Ernst Bloch, Ästhetik des Vor-Scheins, ed. Gert Ueding, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974). Many of the same essays in this book are contained in Ernst Bloch, The Utopian Function of Art and Literature, trans. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987).
Peter Bürger, “Institution Kunst als literatursoziologische Kategorie,” in Seminar: Literatur- und Kunstsoziologie, ed. Peter Bürger (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), 261.
Cf. Mary Elizabeth Storer, La Mode des contes des fées (1685–170) (Paris: Champion, 1928);
Jacques Barchilon, Le conte merveilleux français de 1690 à 1190 (Paris: Champion, 1975);
and Raymonde Robert, Le conte des fées littéraire en France de la fin du XVIIe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1982).
For comments on how women writers used the discourse to express their criticisms of court conventions and social practices, see Lewis Seifert, Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France, 1690–1715: Nostalgic Utopias (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
Patricia Hannon, Fabulous Identities: Women’s Fairy Tales in Seventeenth-Century France (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998);
and Jean Mainil, Madame D’Aulnoy et le Rire des Fées: Essai sur la subversion féerique et le merveilleux comique sous l’ancien régime (Paris: Klimé, 2001).
Most of these tales have been translated into English. See Frank G. Ryder and Robert Browning, eds., German Literary Fairy Tales (New York: Continuum, 1983)
and Jack Zipes, ed., Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture (New York: Viking, 1991).
Cf. Fred E. Schrader, Die Formierung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, 1550–1850 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1996).
See Shawn Jarvis and Jeannine Blackwell, The Queen’s Mirror: Fairy Tales by German Women, 1780–1900 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).
See Ulrike Bastian, Die “Kinder- und Hausmärchen” der Brüder Grimm in der literaturpädagogischen Diskussion des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Giessen: Haag & Herchen, 1981).
Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), 102.
Ernst Bloch, “Bessere Luftschlösser in Jahrmarkt und Zirkus, in Märchen und Kolportage” in Ästhetik des Vor-Scheins, ed. Gert Ueding, Vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), 73–4. See the translation, “Better Castles in the Sky at the County Fair and Circus, in Fairy Tales and Colportage,” in The Utopian Function of Art and Literature, 169.
Elias Canetti, Die Provinz des Menschen: Aufzeichnungen 1942–1912 (Munich: Hanser, 1972), 48.
Yaak Karsunke, “Deutsches Märchen,” in Mädchen, pfeif auf den Prinzen: Märchengedichte von Günter Grass bis Sarah Kirsch, ed. Wolfgang Mieder (Cologne: Diederichs, 1983), 35.
Janosch, “Hans Mein Igel,” in Janosch erzählt Grimm’s Märchen (Weinheim: Beltz & Gelberg, 1972), 170–175.
Margaret Kassajep, “Dornröschen und Prinz Hasse,” in Deutsche Hausmärchen frischgetrimmt (Dachau: Baedeker & Lang, 1980), 84–86.
Burckhard and Gisela Garbe, “Rotkäppchen oder: Wolf bleibt Wolf,” in Der ungestiefelte Kater: Grimms Märchen umerzählt (Göttingen: sage & schreibe, 1985), 87–90.
Chris Schrauff, Der Wolf und seine Steine (Hannover: SOAK, 1986), 108–110.
See Jack Zipes, “Grimms in Farbe, Bild und Ton: Der deutsche Märchenfilm für Kinder im Zeitalter der Kulturindustrie,” in Aufbruch zum neuen bundesdeutschen Kinderfilm, ed. Wolfgang Schneider (Hardeck: Eulenhof, 1982): 212–224.
Cf. Andreas von Prondczynsky, Die unendliche Sehnsucht nach sich selbst: Auf den Spuren eines neuen Mythos: Versuch über eine “unendliche Geschichte” (Frankfurt am Main: dipa, 1983).
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© 2002 Jack Zipes
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Zipes, J. (2002). The German Obsession with Fairy Tales. In: The Brothers Grimm. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09873-3_5
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