little brother and little sister

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Illustration, late 19th century
Illustration, late 19th century

Brother and sister is a fairy tale ( ATU 450). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm at number 11 (KHM 11).

content

Illustration by Ludwig Emil Grimm to Little Brothers and Sisters as a frontispiece to the first volume of Grimm's Children's and Household Tales in the second edition from 1819
Illustration by Ludwig Emil Grimm

The siblings brother and sister have not had a quiet minute since the death of their birth mother. They are beaten by their stepmother every day and there is nothing to eat but hard bread crusts. Eventually they flee. When they arrive in a large forest at night, they sit down in a hollow tree to sleep. The next day they hear a spring flowing out of the rocks near the tree and little brother gets thirsty, but the wicked stepmother - a witch - has followed the children and bewitched the springs. One says, "whoever drinks from me becomes a tiger", the second "a wolf". Little sister hears it and holds back little brother. With the third one, however, who says “a deer”, brother drinks and becomes a deer. Little sister puts her gold garter around his neck, with a rope made of rushes on it. They live in a house in the woods. When the king starts the hunt, the deer absolutely wants to be there. In the evening it has to say at the door “my little sister, let me in” so that she lets it in. On the second day, the foot is slightly injured, a hunter follows him, hears the spell and tells the king. Sister is shocked by the wound, but it heals quickly. The deer is hunted again, in the evening the king comes, says the saying and takes the girl to his wife to his castle, the deer too. When she has a child, the stepmother comes as a servant, suffocates the queen in the bathroom and puts her own one-eyed daughter in bed. The king doesn't notice anything. Only the nurse sees the queen looking after her child and deer at midnight. When the spirit speaks, she reports it to the king. He hears her repeating the verses the next night and the following. Then he speaks to her and she lives again. Stepmother and stepsister are judged and the deer is redeemed.

style

Illustration by Otto Ubbelohde , 1909
Illustration by Otto Ubbelohde , 1909

The text begins quite abruptly: “Little brother took his little sister by the hand and said, 'We haven't had a good hour since our mother's dead; the stepmother beats us every day ... That God have mercy '(cf. KHM 135 ),' if our mother only knew! ' (cf. KHM 89 ). ”The children, portrayed as believing, want to“ go out into the wide world ”, a hollow tree is a refuge (cf. KHM 3 , 123 ). The Brothers Grimm from KHM 69 Jorinde and Joringel knew that witches sneak secretly . Little sister wants to "never leave the deer", as in KHM 51 Fundevogel . There is often a house in the forest (KHM 9 , 13 , 22 , 31 , 40 , 53 , 68 , 93 , 116 , 123 , 125 , 127 , 163 , 169 ), including the king hunting deer (KHM 113 ). It is repeated three times in the source, hunt and verse of the queen. The plot is divided into two parts, the marriage is followed by the attack with the bride pushed under, as in KHM 13 The Three Little Men in the Forest , KHM 89 The Goose Girl , KHM 135 The White and Black Bride . The wicked daughter "was led into the forest." The transfigured melancholy verses are particularly impressive:

“What is my child doing? what is my deer doing?
Now I come twice more (then "again", "again this time") and then never again. "

That the bad daughter was “ugly like the night” is folk-poetic (in KHM 135 : “to be black as the night and ugly as sin”), that her mother “wants to be at hand when the time comes”, a popular trend also literarily. Witchcraft and metamorphosis identify the text as a magical fairy tale . A legend would take guilt seriously as a cause of transformation, salvation then usually fails, a dead person who has returned would be spooky .

The text of the 1st edition was shorter, the brother is drinking straight away from the well that the stepmother had jumped out of the rock by the tree. Little sister cries for three days and leads the deer into a cave without a gold ribbon. The king simply lifts the girl onto his horse. The false bride is not one-eyed. For the second edition, the fairy tale received its longer, since unchanged plot and description, including more verbatim speeches. For the 6th edition, Sister's dramatic speech appeared: "Now they will kill you, and I am here alone in the forest and am forsaken by all the world: I will not let you out." It was shocking when "a man came in" (cf. KHM 12 ). The witch “accomplished” the murder, and in the end she burns “to ashes”.

origin

Illustration by Arthur Rackham , 1917
Little sister Alyonushka weeps for her brother Ivanushka, painting by Viktor Michailowitsch Wasnezow , 1881.

Grimm's comment notes: “After two stories from the Maing area”, the hunt is missing in one. You compare one more from “ HR v. Schröter "with verses, where the little brother is hunted as a deer, little sister is turned into a duck and takes care of her child when dead, as in KHM 13 The Three Little Men in the Forest ," also in the old Danish folk song (Danske viser 1, 206-208, Altd. Blätter 1, 186) ”, a“ folk book ”by Melusine , furthermore“ the Serbian song of the walled-in mother breastfeeding her child ”,“ Souvestre le foyer breton p. 3. 4 ”, Aulnoys la biche au bois .

Grimm's comment on the 1st edition reproduced a text fragment, where the brother becomes a golden stag from drinking, the sister becomes a big, beautiful girl, the king catches the stag and marries her. This corresponds to Jacob Grimm's handwritten original version of Goldner Hirsch from 1810, which indicates the progress in bullet points. It already came from the Hassenpflug family . The version of the 1st edition (1812) was told on March 10, 1811 by Marie Hassenpflug . From the 2nd edition (1819) onwards, a text communicated by her in a letter on March 8, 1813 has been mixed in, including the preprint in Friedrich Wilhelm Gubitz 's partner in 1817, for which Wilhelm Grimm sent the manuscript to Achim von Arnim .

The fact that “from the Maingegenden” is noted for both sources indicates that they are memories of Marie Hassenpflug's childhood. Heinz Rölleke's story appears sentimentally, also modernized and made pious, in that the heroine is not an animal but a spirit and is redeemed by “God's grace”. Tristan und Isolde already had the hidden bride in the Middle Ages . On the other hand, the old motif of animal transformation of the main character and re-transformation through killing the animal was probably no longer understood or found too cruel.

Little Brother and Little Sister later appeared in the child-friendly small edition of the collection and became a popular fairy tale. Particularly similar is Grimm's KHM 141 The little lamb and fish , KHM 15 Hansel and Gretel , with a false bride KHM 13 The three little men in the forest , KHM 135 The white and black bride , KHM 89 The goose girl , furthermore KHM 9 The twelve brothers , KHM 49 The six swans , Tiecks The blonde Eckbert , with the little gold chain maybe also Bechstein's The golden roebuck , The seven swans , Basiles The two small cakes .

Fairy tale type AaTh 450 Little Brothers and Sisters occurs in Europe and the Middle East and is apparently independent of literary tradition, the origin unknown. The verses often agree surprisingly (see also KHM 141 The Little Lamb and Little Fish ). The first part can be supplemented with exposure in the forest, finding home by scattering bowls or burning the witch in the oven (AaTh 327 A, KHM 15 Hansel and Gretel ), or good and bad sisters are rewarded or punished (AaTh 480, KHM 24 Frau Holle ), or the dead mother or cow helps (AaTh 511, KHM 130 one- eyed, two-eyed and three-eyed ). In Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish variants, the parents want to slaughter the children (cf. KHM 47 Von dem Machandelboom ), followed by a magical escape (cf. KHM 51 Fundevogel ). In several Greek, animal brothers are slaughtered, an apple or orange tree grows out of the bones, in one of them a sister climbs up, they become two new stars. In some Russian variants, the transformation comes from licking goat salt. The younger sister is transformed into an Uzbek and a Turkmen one. An Estonian and a Serbian text explain the origin of chamois and deer. That the prince lures the girl from the tree occurs around the Balkans and Turkey. The second part around the underscored bride resembles AaTh 403 (KHM 13 The three little men in the forest , KHM 135 The white and black bride ), further AaTh 408 ( The three lemons ) , AaTh 451 (KHM 9 The twelve brothers , KHM 25 Die seven ravens , KHM 49 The Six Swans ) and AaTh 533 (KHM 89 The Goose Girl ). Before Grimm, only Ninnillo and Nennella in Basiles Pentameron and a poem Metamorphoseos puellae et parvuli liber unus in the book Variorum epigrammatum ad St. Rozimontanum libellus by Christopher Kobylienśki , Cracow 1558 , are written evidence . Researchers compared Phrixos and Helle in the Argonaut saga .

Walter Scherf finds it more primitive when the little brother wants to drink from the footsteps of animals ( sister Alenuška and brother Ivanuška in Aleksandr Afanas'evs Narodnye russkie skarzki ). Where Grimm's text in the second part is very similar to KHM 13 The Three Little Men in the Forest , other narrators disagree as to how the heroes are killed. Recordings of oral versions are generally not so cute, he names Gyula Ortutay's The Roe Deer in Hungarian Folk Tales (1966), Georgios Anastasiu Megas ' Pulia and the Morning Star in Fairy Tales of the Greek Islands ( The Fairy Tales of World Literature , 1979), Heikki Paasonen's Take a Stepmother! in Mordvinische Volksdichtung (1941), Leo Frobenius ' Die Stiefkinder in Volksmärchen der Kabylen (1921), Johann Wilhelm Wolf's Das goldenne Kingdom in Deutsche Hausmärchen , KHM 113 De zwei Künigeskinner , KHM 169 Das Waldhaus , Pawoł Nedos Kosmatej in Sorbische Volksmärchen . Bechstein's The Golden Roebuck is also suitable for frequent refuge with an animal . Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy wrote La biche au bois .

In a variant of the fairy tale handed down from Russia by the fairy tale collector Afanassjew there , the siblings are Aljonuschka and Ivanuschka (also the name of the fairy tale there). Here the little brother drinks from a hoof print and turns into a goat instead of a deer. The little sister doesn't marry a king either, but only an unspecified "normal" man, but is also happy with him until the witch tries to destroy her new happiness. In this version, too, the little brother is redeemed by punishing the witch. The witch's own daughter does not appear.

interpretation

Sculpture by Ignatius Taschner at the Märchenbrunnen in the Volkspark Friedrichshain , Berlin 1913
Brothers Grimm Stone in Göttingen

The anthroposophist Rudolf Meyer explains how the soul experiences desires in solitude, represented as animals in the forest, under the guidance of their wisdom the spirit seeker finds them, represented as a king, in the hunting robe of death. It gives birth to new consciousness, he has to recognize and protect it in order to redeem the soul and free the will nature from the chains of desire. Similarly, Friedel Lenz interprets the little brother and sister as immature will and naive soul that must lead him, then he leads the spirit to her. It gives birth to the eternal self, it must be nurtured in concentrated silence. Materialism (stepmother) and atavistic clairvoyance (one-eyed) force them into the dreamlike, but selfless patience leads to freedom. Ortrud Stumpfe speaks of the power of the long waking silence of the soul that everyone has to find. Edzard Storck sees the water of life darkened by past-bound forces into the transience of the creature that awaits redemption.

Hedwig von Beit interprets persecution and metamorphosis by the Great Mother , as in other fairy tales, as a bond with the mother or the predominance of the mother archetype , the incest siblings as the conflicting connection of opposites in the self , because this is androgynous. According to Bruno Bettelheim , children learn here how their soul develops various aspects that need to be reunited. Dangers and pain are overcome, and attention is drawn to the two life crises of moving out of the family and starting one's own family. Animal experiences ripen as hunting, ego and super-ego as care, antisocial must be banned.

Linde von Keyserlingk understands the forest scene as the archetype and ideal image of love, as siblings learn for life, often in mutual isolation from parental authority. Mythical siblings such as the Indian twins Yama and Yamuna were ancestral parents of mankind, but such sibling marriages are a prerogative of the children of gods. Puberty makes the boy the deer the mother wanted, the sister the better mother. The fact that the Prince Charming is called King here suggests that they see the missing father in him. A gold garter is as eye-catching as a gold wedding ring, in France the rainbow is called the garter of the Blessed Virgin, it occurs in wedding rites. Von Keyserlingk also remarks that the king changes the saying from “my little sister, let me in” to “ dear little sister, let me in.” The boy brings him into a triangular relationship, but pulls himself out of the unspoken conflict with the sister. back to his childhood. Marriage seems ideal, but unequal, something is missing. With the “baby shock”, the offended fairy of the sources of life returns to catch up on what has been missed. She is negatively attached to the daughter, who in turn clings to baby and brother. The “nanny” becomes a neutral “therapist”, the isolated king becomes active.

Eugen Drewermann emphasizes that the text does not tell of two siblings, but of a girl, and that every detail is a symbol. Under the sudden anger of an overwhelmed, well-meaning mother, it feels wrong in the world. The melancholy in the rain is forced defenselessness out of repression of one's own aggression. The hollow tree symbolizes the lost good mother who does not exist, i.e. death. The midday heat of youthful vitality brings a thirst for life, the urge of one's own blood rustles, the fountain is Freudian the female genitals. The internalized image of the mother forbids one's own, especially sexual desires for life and love, and fills them with persecution fear, which is projected onto things themselves. The delay of instincts reduces the fear, ultimately the breakthrough of instincts follows, which the girl experiences as animal, and any developmental progress as a catastrophe. The deer is still the smallest evil, shy, reserved, without a bite of its own, the initiative leaves it to others. The golden garter belt would, ostensibly, make little sense in such a poor girl, it stands for erotic and socially lofty dreams, concealed in a rush ribbon. Varying between the desire for support and the fear of being a nuisance requires a kind of searching in order not to find, development delayed by ritual. The hunt is like dancing, the foot a biblical symbol of the female genitals, the hip horn a male. The missing father is elevated to a figure of light. The beloved must notice the fear behind the ostensible lust for hunting in order to help overcome it in the trust of love, to learn their language (cf. Rapunzel ). Also the original instinctual wish that the deer must come along. The nanny has no idea how her motherhood weakens his marital identity. Further below the super-ego of the “stepmother”, the shadow aspect of the lazy “stepsister” appears to split off frightened instincts (“doe”), the man experiences her as if she were changed and complies. In childbed psychosis she becomes a night specter, nocturnal, depressive during the day, mute in the rush of contradicting feelings that no one understands, some affected people then use really poetic expression. Mother's love as the last, still permitted impulse becomes the core of new self-worth and acceptance.

While depth psychological interpretations increasingly include the subtleties of the fairy tale text, but also experiences from therapeutic practice, they agree to subject actors to be understood as parts of the female psyche, whose ego represents the heroine. At Bettelheim she is me and super-me. The latter is the witch for Drewermann, he emphasizes that with little brothers it is the fearfully split off instinctual parts of the woman, which explains her passivity. Linde von Keyserlingk's depiction, which is also based on systems psychology, idealizes the meaning of the sibling relationship and understands the action as a generation change in the family system. Anthroposophical authors emphasize the heroine's silence, perhaps thinking of Rudolf Steiner , who wrote: "The secret student enters the 'path of knowledge' silently and unnoticed by the outside world." The golden garter is always an allusion to the Order of the Garter . Wilhelm Salber sees a morphology of the movement of our cultures of life in a self-regulation between overturning and ordering. The homeopath Martin Bomhardt compares the fairy tale with the medicine picture of Aethusa .

Receptions

Sheetlet of the Deutsche Post of the GDR from 1970

The fairy tale found its way into visual media such as picture sheets , collector's pictures , postcards and wafers early on . Spotted lungwort is also called "Hansel and Gretel" or "little brother and sister". Ignatius Taschner created a sculpture at the Märchenbrunnen in the Volkspark Friedrichshain in Berlin-Friedrichshain (1913), Katharina Szelinski-Singer at the Märchenbrunnen in the Schulenburgpark in Berlin-Neukölln (1970). The “Rehbrunnen” by Wilhelm Merten in Brühl (Freiburg im Breisgau) is also a fairy tale fountain . The Brothers Grimm Festival in Hanau showed the fairy tale in 1997 and 2007, the Rostock Volkstheater probably in 2019. Roland Zoss set little brothers and sisters to music in 2006 in the Swiss dialect fairy tale series Liedermärli . Inga Steinmetz published a manga in 2012 . Susanne Thommes' crime novel Little Brother and Little Sister has no relation to the fairy tale. A Düsseldorf model agency and a Berlin kindergarten are also called that.

Movie and TV

Little brothers and sisters were called episodes of the television series Die Camper (1999), Die Familiendetektivin (2014), Rote Rosen (2018).

literature

  • Heinz Rölleke, Albert Schindehütte: Once upon a time…. The true fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and who told them. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-8218-6247-7 , pp. 255-259.
  • Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 , pp. 22-26.
  • Walter Scherf: The fairy tale dictionary. Volume 1. CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39911-8 , pp. 128-132.
  • Ines Köhler: Little brother and sister. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 2. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1979, pp. 919-925.

Web links

Wikisource: Little Brother and Little Sister  - Sources and Full Texts
Commons : Brother and Sister (fairy tale)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lothar Bluhm and Heinz Rölleke: “Popular speeches that I always listen to”. Fairy tale - proverb - saying. On the folk-poetic design of children's and house fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. New edition. S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-7776-0733-9 , pp. 49-50.
  2. ^ Lutz Röhrich: Fairy tales and reality. 3. Edition. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1974, ISBN 3-515-01901-4 , pp. 22, 101.
  3. ↑ Heinz Rölleke (ed.): The oldest fairy tale collection of the Brothers Grimm. Synopsis of the handwritten original version from 1810 and the first prints from 1812. Edited and explained by Heinz Rölleke. Cologny-Geneve 1975 (Fondation Martin Bodmer, Printed in Switzerland), pp. 188-189, 370.
  4. ↑ Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbook on the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 , pp. 22-26.
  5. ^ Brothers Grimm: Children's and Household Tales. Last hand edition with the original notes by the Brothers Grimm. With an appendix of all fairy tales and certificates of origin, not published in all editions, published by Heinz Rölleke. Volume 3: Original Notes, Guarantees of Origin, Afterword. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-003193-1 , p. 446.
  6. ↑ Heinz Rölleke, Albert Schindehütte: Once upon a time…. The true fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and who told them. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-8218-6247-7 , pp. 258-259.
  7. ↑ Ines Köhler: Little brother and sister. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 2. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1979, pp. 919-925.
  8. ↑ Walter Scherf: The fairy tale dictionary. Volume 1. CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39911-8 , pp. 128-132.
  9. ^ Rudolf Meyer: The wisdom of German folk tales. Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1963, pp. 81–86.
  10. ^ Friedel Lenz: Visual language of fairy tales. 8th edition. Free Spiritual Life and Urachhaus publishing house, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-87838-148-4 , pp. 71-83.
  11. ↑ Ortrud Stumpfe: The symbolic language of fairy tales. 7th edition. Aschendorff, Münster 1992, ISBN 3-402-03474-3 , pp. 64, 178.
  12. ↑ Edzard Storck: Old and new creation in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Turm Verlag, Bietigheim 1977, ISBN 3-7999-0177-9 , pp. 64, 101, 265.
  13. ↑ Hedwig von Beit: Contrast and Renewal in Fairy Tales. Second volume of «Symbolism of Fairy Tales». 2nd Edition. Francke Verlag, Bern and Munich 1965, pp. 210-213, 381-382.
  14. ↑ Bruno Bettelheim: Children need fairy tales. Translated from the English by Liselotte Mickel, Brigitte Weitbrecht. 31st edition. dtv, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-423-35028-0 , pp. 92-98 (American original edition: The Uses of Enchantment , 1975).
  15. ↑ Linde von Keyserlingk: Little Brother and Little Sister. A very special love. 1st edition. Kreuz Verlag, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-268-00068-1 .
  16. ↑ Eugen Drewermann: Dear little sister, let me in. Grimm's fairy tales interpreted in terms of depth psychology. 11th edition. dtv, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-35050-4 , pp. 187-311 (first published by Walter-Verlag, 1990).
  17. ↑ Rudolf Steiner: How do you get knowledge of the higher worlds? 24th edition. Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach 1993, ISBN 3-7274-6001-6 , p. 22.
  18. ^ Wilhelm Salber: fairy tale analysis (= work edition Wilhelm Salber. Volume 12). 2nd Edition. Bouvier, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-416-02899-6 , pp. 101-103.
  19. ^ Martin Bomhardt: Symbolic Materia Medica. 3. Edition. Verlag Homöopathie + Symbol, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-9804662-3-X , p. 40.
  20. ↑ Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbook on the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 , p. 24.
  21. ^ Festival Hanau - Archive
  22. ^ Volkstheater Rostock - schedule
  23. ↑ Grimm's Manga. Special tape. Tokyopop, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8420-0638-6 .
  24. ↑ Susanne Thommes: Little Brother and Little Sister. Verlag der Criminale, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-89811-690-5 (first published by Diogenes, Zurich 1986).
  25. ^ Brothers & Sisters GmbH
  26. ↑ Foundation Pro Common Spirit - Kindergarten "Little Brother & Little Sister"
  27. ↑ Brothers and Sisters (1953) at filmportal.deTemplate: Filmportal.de Title / Maintenance / ID is missing in Wikidata
  28. ↑ Tales of the World - Puppetry the small stage in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  29. ↑ SimsalaGrimm (season 1, episode 13) - little brother and sister in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  30. ↑ Little Brother and Little Sister (2008) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  31. ↑ imdb.com on "Little Brother and Sister"