The Bremen Town Musicians

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The Bremen Town Musicians by Gerhard Marcks (1953) in front of the Bremen Town Hall

The Bremen Town Musicians is the title of a folk tale that was first published by the Brothers Grimm in 1819 in their famous collection of Children's and Household Tales ("Grimm's Fairy Tales").

action

The old donkey is to be slaughtered. That's why he fled and wanted to become a town musician in Bremen. On the way he meets a dog, a cat and a rooster one after the other. The three are already old and should also die. They follow the donkey and want to become town musicians too. On their way they come to a forest and decide to spend the night there. However, they discover a robber's house there, frighten and drive away the robbers by standing on each other in front of the window and breaking in with loud "singing". The animals sit down at the table and take over the house as a night camp. A robber who finds out later in the night whether the house can be re-entered is chased away again by the animals and thus for good. The Bremen Town Musicians like the house so much that they don't want to leave and stay there.

meaning

The story is related to the literary type of animal fable and it shows the characteristics of a servant tale: the animals correspond to the servants and maids who have grown old, worn out and become useless due to the loss of productivity. With their departure, their solidarity and courage, they achieve the almost impossible. They outsmart the bad guys, create a home and thus a new life. It is one of the fairy tales in the Grimm collection “that addresses the socially utopian wishes of the lower class in bourgeois society”. Because those animal fates reflect those of humans, issues of life are addressed that are connected with rights (of humans and animals alike). Parallels to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are particularly striking . The message of both Grimm's fairy tale and most of the later adaptations is optimistic and suggests the possibility of sustainable solutions, even from precarious situations.

The fairy tale “The Bremen Town Musicians” is a prime example of the narrative type “Animals on the move”.

In psychoanalytic investigations, many narrative patterns from traditional fairy tales were investigated, but the town musicians received little attention.

The edition of the Brothers Grimm

After the first edition of their Kinder- und Haus-Märchen (KHM) from the years 1812 (Volume 1) and 1815 (Volume 2), the Brothers Grimm published the second edition of the two volumes in 1819; their foreword is dated July 3, 1819.

The folk tale Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten was included by the Brothers Grimm as the 27th fairy tale in this 2nd edition of their fairy tale collection and thus published for the first time in 1819. Two stories from the Paderborn region are given as the source; Baron August Franz von Haxthausen is usually assumed to be the mediator , although there is no evidence of this. In a variant contributed by Dorothea Viehmann from the village of Zwehrn near Kassel, the house and farm animals enter the house peacefully and make music against food for the robbers. When the robbers return from the raid at midnight, a scout is chased out of the house by the animals. As in other fairy tales, the Grimms have revised and enriched the material brought in. For example, in the edition of 1857 it is mentioned for the first time that the donkey "undauntedly carried the sacks to the mill". While the animal names "Grauschimmel" and "Packan" already existed in the 2nd KHM edition in 1819, "Bartputzer" and "Rothkopf" were mentioned for the first time in the 4th edition in 1840. The text has had many proverbial sayings since it was first printed: noticed that the wind wasn't blowing; when it's up to you; Good advice is valuable now; through the marrow and bone; ate as if starving for four weeks; let go of the fenugreek; and the one who last told this, his mouth is still warm . From the small edition from 1825, the cat looks like three days of rain .

Fairy tale research and Bremen town musicians

The development over time and the regional migrations of European folk tales have primarily been examined and classified by fairy tale research: the oldest version of the type Animals in the Night Quarters is contained in the Latin animal epic with the title Ysengrimus by the Ghent cleric Nivard von Gent (around 1148) . Hans Sachs with the Kecklein (1551), Georg role Hagen in his epic Froschmeuseler (1595) and others have called Grimm works that still only animals involved in the plot, used this material cycle as well as in the tradition of Grimm Ludwig Bechstein with Ingratitude is the world's wages in New German Fairy Tale Book (1856). Dieter Brand-Kruth and Andreas Lienkamp convey the latest research on the topic.

On the other hand, the numerous, methodologically useless attempts to link places and topographical situations in the fictional animal tales with specific places or buildings are not very serious . With “Bremen” in the title of the fairy tale, however, the Hanseatic city of Bremen is clearly meant. In this fairy tale, Bremen is an image for a place of longing for the 'animals' that have fled the country. During the Hanseatic era, the city had special town and civil rights, employed town musicians from the Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century, and was also a place where emigrants along the Weser came overseas via Bremen. The friendship of the Brothers Grimm with the former mayor Johann Smidt and with his daughter Johanne, who died in 1819, could also have contributed to the naming of the town. For the 200th anniversary of the first publication of the fairy tale, a three-day scientific symposium took place in Bremen in 2019 , the focus of which was on the question of the transferability of the animal fairy tale to real human conditions.

Pictorial tradition

The Bremen Town Musicians are among the most frequently chosen figurations among the fairy tale themes. The dramatic climax of the story with the animals forming a pyramid of figures to the horror of the robbers is the preferred motif from this story. Its visual recognition potential and its uniqueness are unique.

Book illustrations

As the earliest example, the famous English caricaturist George Cruikshank provided the template for an engraving in the 1823 edition of German Popular Stories , a translation of Edgar Taylor 's children's and household tales .

Since the fairy tale became so popular in the following years that it was hardly missing in a fairy tale collection, and since the invention of the high-speed printing press there have been more and more illustrated fairy tale books, the number of depictions grew into unmanageable numbers. In addition to the books, there were sheets of pictures , collector's pictures , glossy pictures , advertising stamps , postcards , emergency notes , postage stamps and many other media that are not only aimed at children, but also address adults as a marketing element.

The Bremen Town Musicians by Gerhard Marcks (1953) at the Bremen Town Hall, in the background the Church of Our Lady

As early as 1938, in view of the developing city tourism, there were considerations in Bremen to erect a kind of memorial for the Bremen town musicians, but it was not until 1951 that a visit by Gerhard Marcks , one of the most important German sculptors of his generation, gave rise to the realization. The commissioned project run by the tourist office and the group's originally planned one-year trial installation on September 30, 1953 in front of the left front side of the Bremen town hall was accompanied by a lively and ongoing public controversy about costs, scale and the lack of consideration for Bremen artists. For some people from Bremen, the group was initially unmoved and “funny” enough. But it is precisely its symbolism, its formal rigor and restrained stylization that has certainly contributed to the fact that the smaller than life-size bronze sculpture next to the Bremen Roland became a secret landmark of Bremen and is part of the mandatory sightseeing program for tourists. Visitors are often told that if you touch the donkey's front legs, a wish will come true. The location of the bronze sculpture by Marcks has been at the Bremen town hall since 1953.

In 2009, the location issue was re-initiated, but the initiative fizzled out.

The 200 cm high group of figures, formally acquired in 1955, is a listed building. Second casts of the sculpture by Gerhard Marcks have been in the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and at a private foundation in Milwaukee since 1973 , 10 more casts based on the small design model in various collections.

The image scheme of the group seen in profile has meanwhile advanced to the official “location corporate identity ” and has replaced the traditional key image from the city ​​coat of arms in Bremen's city marketing.

Plastic representations

  • Bronze figure group by Bernhard Hoetger , since 1926 at the Sieben-Faulen-Brunnen in Bremer Böttcherstraße
  • Bronze statue in Bremen by Gerhard Marcks , since 1953 on loan at the west portal of the Bremen town hall; Acquired in 1955 through donations for Bremen (see the previous section)
  • Group of figures as an old tavern sign on the German House (today Beck's am Markt), Obernstrasse / Am Markt
  • Fountain attachment by Karl Lemke (Usedom, 1979) in front of the Waidspeicher in Erfurt
  • Bronze fountain The Bremen Town Musicians , since 1984 in Ense (Bremen-Ense) in the Soest district in front of the Enser town hall with the animals of the region: rooster, pig, duck, cat and pigeon
  • Memorial stone near Brakel / Höxter district
  • Bronze statue Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten by Christa Baumgärtel in Riga behind the Petrikirche , donated in 1990 by the twin city of Bremen
  • Plastic in Leipzig at N 51 ° 19.878 ', E 012 ° 23.315', where the four animals harass the last predator
  • Commemorative plaque Syker Heroes in Syke -Suurend with the "traces" of donkeys, dogs, cats and roosters immortalized in bronze, which were made here around 1250 and found again in 1976
  • Copper sculpture by Edmund Hopf on a house wall in Bremen- Huchting , Kirchhuchtinger Landstrasse ; Gewoba Foundation
  • Plastic on Anton-Pieck-Platz in the Efteling theme park
  • Animal group by Heinrich Möller (1835–1929), in the Senate room of the Bremen Ratskeller since the end of the 19th century
  • Brass sculpture by August Tölken (1892–1975), since 1926 in the St. Petrus house in Böttcherstraße in Bremen
  • Copper sculpture by Karl Ehrentraut in Bremen; since 1950 with interruptions at the glory on the Teerhof peninsula
  • Animal group Tower of the Animals by Lutz Hähnel on the corner of Tuchmacherstr. and Mühlenstr. in Fürstenwalde / Spree
  • Medal of the Bremen Senate from 1965
  • In Japan , a stone sculpture was created in Osaka in 1985, and in 1998 the Bremen artist Kirsten Brünjes made a sculpture for the city of Kawasaki. In Kawasaki the symbol is represented in different forms.
  • In 1993 the Polish artist Katarzyna Kozyra put one copy of each of the four species on top of one another in the form of a pyramid of killed and stuffed animals as a diploma thesis. The work became the subject of heated discussion about the ethical limits of art because of a drastic video of the killing of the horse. It is located in the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw .
  • At the Bremen Solidarity Prize , a sculpture by the town musicians (artist Bernd Altenstein ) has been presented since 1988 .
  • Maurizio Cattelan : Love lasts forever , sculpture made of four animal skeletons on top of each other, 1997, Kunsthalle Bremen.
  • Group of figures from 2019 made from the trunk of a beech tree by the chainsaw artist Ragna Reusch in Bremen- Huchting in the park on the left of the Weser (woodland nature trail) near Hohenhorster Weg (around no.132, back side).

Commemorative coins

Motif side of the 20 euro commemorative coin

On February 9, 2017, the Federal Republic of Germany issued a silver commemorative coin with a face value of 20 euros in the series “Grimms Märchen” . The motif was designed by Elena Gerber.

Literary reception

The quote ... you can find something better than death everywhere ... goes back to Carl Zuckmayer in his work Der Hauptmann von Köpenick , because nothing seemed more suitable to him than this sentence from the Bremen Town Musicians to make it clear that from every almost hopeless situation there is strength for a new beginning could be created. Günter Bruno Fuchs ' novel Report of a Bremen Town Musician alludes to the fairy tale in which the discharged street sweeper often calls himself an old donkey (you can find something better than death everywhere) and finally dreams of the foreman storming a robber's house as a rooster.

In Janosch's parody , the hungry animals are chased away everywhere until a record company turns their last howling in hunger and cold into a hit with expensive advertising. Iring Fetscher interprets the text ironically with regard to squatters as the eviction of property speculators by poor pensioners (dock workers, soldiers, girls and tenors), similar to Siegfried Stadler . Even Nicolas Born tells of the fairy tale. In Wolfram Siebeck's Die Bonner Stadtmusikanten , the animals drive away the citizens with Nazi slogans, who let them go and prefer to go on vacation. In 1998, Uwe Heilemann examined in the glossary Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten and the statutory pension insurance the question of whether the four protagonists of the fairy tale could apply for an old-age or disability pension with a chance of success. A manga was published in 2012 by Reyhan Yildirim .

In 2007, Eugen Drewermann related the fairy tale to daily politics. The animals establish a community here as street musicians in order to still be worth something and not to be slaughtered, however unsuitable their voices may be. Politicians, according to Drewermann, should stop abusing the trust of ordinary people who do not want to live their lives in fear of existence, but in love and gratitude.

Stage works

Stage versions of the fairy tale come from:

Radio plays (selection)

Low German versions

High German versions

Film adaptations (selection)

Town musicians and council musicians in old Bremen

Council musicians lead a wedding procession in 1618. Painting (detail) in the Focke Museum Bremen

The real Bremen town musicians, to whom the wish of the four fairy tale characters refers only as a vague idea, were minstrels who were more or less permanently employed by the town authorities. In 1339 a council trumpeter was mentioned in a document in Bremen. Later there were mostly around four musicians in the northern German cities, around 1500 two trumpeters , a trombonist and two pipers were among the Bremen council musicians. They accompanied embassies to Deventer and Hamburg, among other places, and played at Senate receptions and weddings. Four winds also accompany the wedding procession shown on several 17th century Bremen oil paintings. In 1751 the town musicians were incorporated into the town music corps. In the 19th century, the city music director carried on the tradition of city music that led to today's city-subsidized orchestras.

literature

Primary literature

  • Children's and Household Tales. Collected by the Brothers Grimm. First volume. With two coppers. Second increased and improved edition. G. Reimer , Berlin 1819, pp. 141-145 .
  • Brothers Grimm. Children's and Household Tales. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke . Complete edition, 19th edition. Artemis & Winkler Verlag , Düsseldorf / Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-538-06943-3 , pp. 180-189.
  • 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-Verlag , Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-003193-1 , pp. 59-66, 454.

Secondary literature

Web links

Commons : Town musicians of Bremen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: The Bremen Town Musicians  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richter, p. 27
  2. ↑ Dieter Brand-Kruth: On to Bremen - the town musicians on the trail. Bremen 2019, pp. 75–81.
  3. ^ Siegfried Neumann: Animals on the move . In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales, Vol. 13, New York 2010, Col. 585-594.
  4. ↑ An attempt by Marie-Louise von Franz ( Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten. In: Journal for Analytical Psychology and their Border Areas 2, 1970, pp. 4–22) was methodically criticized by Uther (Röpcke / Hackel-Stehr, p. 47).
  5. ↑ This is the indication of origin in the annotation volumes written by the Brothers Grimm on the children's and house tales of 1822, p. 50 , and 1856, p. 47 .
  6. ↑ The name 'August von Haxthausen' is nowhere in the work of the Brothers Grimm associated with the fairy tale "The Bremen Town Musicians". That he should have contributed the fairy tale is a mere assumption based on a statement made by Elmar von Haxthausen, August von Haxthausen's great-great-great-nephew.
  7. ^ To the whole section: Hans-Jörg Uther: On the origin, picture history and meaning of the fairy tale. In: Andreas Röpcke and Karin Hackel-Stehr: The Town Musicians in Bremen. Bremen 1993, pp. 18–52, with illus.
  8. ↑ (see KHM 29 , 44 , 171 , 199 )
  9. ↑ (probably from the variant of KHM 65 , see KHM 134 )
  10. ↑ 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. 64-67.
  11. ↑ In the Aarne-Thompson-Index , a standard work of fairy tale research, it is classified as Type 130: Uther, Hans-Jörg: The Types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography. Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, Part I: Animal Tales, Tales of Magic, Religious Tales, and Realistic Tales, with an Introduction (FF Communications 284), Helsinki 2011, p. 99.
  12. ^ Siegfried Neumann: Animals on the move. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Vol. 13, Berlin / New York 2010, Col. 587.
  13. ↑ Brand-Kruth, Dieter: "The Bremen Town Musicians". A socio-cultural study (HSS note: Dissertation, University of Bremen), Bremen 2017.
  14. ↑ Lienkamp, ​​Andreas: Uprising for life. 'Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten' and 'Der Hauptmann von Köpenick' - For the 200th birthday of Grimm's and 90th birthday of Zuckmayer's fairy tale, Baden-Baden 2019.
  15. ↑ To the whole section: Dieter Brand-Kruth: On to Bremen - On the track of the town musicians. Bremen 2019, pp. 118–122, and Andreas Lienkamp: Uprising for life. 'Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten' and 'Der Hauptmann von Köpenick', Baden-Baden 2019, chap. 1.
  16. ^ Conference report Symposium
  17. ↑ special brand of German Post Office (1982) Bremen Town Musicians - With the motive Bremen Town Musicians were in 1971 , the German post office of the GDR six commemorative stamps in miniature sheet and brought German Federal Post Office a special stamp worth 30 pence to the switches. In 1982 another special stamp from the Federal Post Office followed for 40 pfennigs with a silhouette of the Bremen Town Musicians (see illustration).
  18. ↑ To the whole section: Andreas Röpcke and Karin Hackel-Stehr (eds.): The town musicians in Bremen. Bremen 1993, pp. 32–45 and 93–123, with illus.
  19. ↑ Due to the importance of the fairy tale for the image of the city of Bremen, the Mayor of Bremen Jens Böhrnsen started a survey at the end of February 2009 as to whether the Marcks statue should be moved to a more prominent place in the city, as the current location is relatively hidden on the town hall wall is ( Weser-Kurier: Citizens' Survey on the Town Musicians ( Memento from June 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive )). NA press portal on February 28, 2009.
  20. ^ Monument database of the LfD . - k: art in public space bremen (on the sculpture by G. Marcks in Bremen)
  21. ↑ Martina Rudloff: Catalog raisonné . In: Günther Busch (Ed.): Gerhard Marcks: The plastic work . Propylaea Publishing House. Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1977, p. 362, No. 571. ISBN 3-549-06620-1 .
  22. ↑ Since 2009 in the design manual of the Bremen economic development agency: Bremen logo
  23. ↑ http://www.erfurt.de/mam/ef/service/mediathek/publikationen/2002/erfurt_denkmale.pdf
  24. ↑ https://www.brakel.de/Leben/Kultur/Bremer-Stadtmusikanten
  25. ↑ http://www.liveriga.com/de/3123-die-bremer-stadtmusikanten
  26. ↑ Town Musicians in Japan . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1986, pp. 210 ( online - May 26, 1986 ).
  27. ↑ Artists' Association of Bremen: Kirsten Brünjes ( Memento from January 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  28. ↑ http://www.bremen-st.com/english/index.html
  29. ↑ Magdalena Ziomek-Beims: Freedom? - Polish art after 1989. Federal Agency for Civic Education, September 8, 2009 ( online )
  30. ↑ Weser Report of May 29, 2019: Fairytale Park .
  31. ↑ See also Andreas Lienkamp: Aufstand für das Leben. 'Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten' and 'Der Hauptmann von Köpenick', Baden-Baden 2019.
  32. ^ Günter Bruno Fuchs: Report of a Bremen Town Musician. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1970, ISBN 3-499-11276-0 (Copyright 1968 Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich).
  33. ↑ Janosch: The Bremen Town Musicians. In: Janosch tells Grimm's fairy tale. Fifty selected fairy tales, retold for today's children. With drawings by Janosch. 1st edition [of many others, including Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten as a single publication in many translations]. Beltz and Gelberg, Weinheim and Basel 1972, ISBN 3-407-80213-7 , pp. 147–155.
  34. ↑ Iring Fetscher: Who kissed Sleeping Beauty awake? The fairy tale confusion book. Claassen Verlag, Hamburg and Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-596-21446-7 , pp. 105-108.
  35. ^ Siegfried Stadler: Marx's fairy tales. In: Die Horen. Vol. 1/52, No. 225, 2007, ISSN  0018-4942 , pp. 211-216.
  36. ^ Nicolas Born: The Bremen Town Musicians. In: Wolfgang Mieder (Ed.): Grim fairy tales. Prose texts from Ilse Aichinger to Martin Walser. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt (Main) 1986, ISBN 3-88323-608-X , pp. 158–162 (first published in: Jochen Jung (Hrsg.): Bilderbogengeschichten. Fairy tales, sagas, adventures. Newly told by authors of our time. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1976, pp. 43-46.).
  37. ^ Wolfram Siebeck: The Bonn Town Musicians. In: Wolfgang Mieder (Ed.): Grim fairy tales. Prose texts from Ilse Aichinger to Martin Walser. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt (Main) 1986, ISBN 3-88323-608-X , pp. 163-164 (first published in: Wolfram Siebeck's best stories. Fischer, Frankfurt 1979, p. 219).
  38. ↑ Die Sozialgerichtsbarkeit 1998, p. 208. ISSN  0943-1462 .
  39. ↑ Grimm's Manga. Special tape. Tokyopop, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8420-0638-6 .
  40. ↑ Eugen Drewermann: From the power of money or fairy tales to the economy. Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf 2007. ISBN 978-3-491-21002-8 , pp. 123-151.
  41. ↑ DNB 1004432712
  42. ^ Gertraude Röhricht: The Bremen Town Musicians: Based on the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm. Fairy tale game in 3 pictures. VEB Friedrich Hofmeister Verlag, Leipzig, 1953. 52 pages .: 6 sheets ill .; 8th
  43. ↑ Neue Zeit of June 18, 1959, p. 4
  44. ^ Robert Bürkner: The Bremen Town Musicians . Meisel, 1960 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  45. ↑ On November 13th 2010 also performed as a children's opera in the IGS Roderbruch in Hanover .
  46. ↑ The Four Musicians of Bremen in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  47. ↑ The Bremen Town Musicians in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  48. ↑ DEFA database ( Memento from March 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  49. ↑ Muppet Wiki
  50. ^ To the whole section: Andreas Röpcke: To the history of the town musicians in Bremen. In: Andreas Röpcke and Karin Hackel-Stehr: The Town Musicians in Bremen. Bremen 1993, pp. 8–17, with illus. - Oliver Rostek: Bremen music history from the Reformation to the middle of the 18th century. Lilienthal 1999., pp. 20-84.

Coordinates: 53 ° 4 ′ 34.25 "  N , 8 ° 48 ′ 27.1"  E