The girl with no hands

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The girl without hands is a fairy tale ( ATU 706, 930). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm at position 31 ( KHM 31). In the first edition, the title was Girls Without Hands .

content

A poor miller meets the devil in the forest in the form of an old man who promises to make him rich in exchange for what is behind his mill. He thinks it's his apple tree, but it's his daughter who swept there. After three years the devil comes to get her, but the pious girl has washed herself clean so that the devil cannot take her with him. When her father takes the water away from her, she cries on her hands. Her father, intimidated by the devil, cuts her off, but she cries on the stumps and the devil has to give up. Her father offers to take care of her, but she wanders away and comes to the king's garden, where she feeds on apples. The prince, instead of banishing her for it, lets her tend the chickens. He loves her and marries her, whereupon his father dies. She has a son while her husband is at war. The devil exchanges her letters so that she is banished with the child by the old, deceived Queen Mother. In the forest, she meets a man who lets her wrap her arms around a tree so that her hands grow back and makes her wait in a house until someone asks to enter three times in God's name. Her husband comes with a servant who sees the light and wants to rest. The king asked three times in God's name. She opens the door, he recognizes her and they return to the castle together.

Grimm's note

The fairy tale was in the 1st edition from 1812 according to a source "from Hessen" ( Marie Hassenpflug ), of which only the less drastic beginning and the exchange of letters by the devil remained. There the girl has to look after the chickens for a while before marriage, and the limbs grow back after an old age in the forest lets her wrap her hands around a tree.

From the 2nd edition, the text is otherwise based on a version “from Zwehrn” (by Dorothea Viehmann ). It began so that the father wanted to marry his daughter, and when she refused, cut off her hands and breasts and chased her away in a white shirt. The mother-in-law exchanges the letters here.

A third variant “from Paderbörn” is like that from Zwehren. Instead of the angel, a light from heaven guides the girl. He sees a blind mouse in the forest, which holds its head in a water and thus can see again, and thus heals its hands.

In a fourth “Tale from Meklenburg”, the father cuts off the daughter's tongue, then the hand, then the arm, because she always prays and crosses. On the advice of a man, the seven-year-old moves away and is housed with a hunter in the stable with the count's dogs. The count takes her to the court, where she meets a beggar who gives her a staff for her alms. With it she wanders to a water in which her tongue and arm swim and grow. She goes back and marries the count.

In a Hessian narrative fragment, the mother and two children are cast off, whereby two fingers that the children are carrying are cut off. They are stolen by animals and turned into kitchen boys, the mother washerwoman. The Brothers Grimm note that medieval legends such as May and Beaflor or The Beautiful Helena apparently come entirely from this fairy tale. You name further references: Zingerle "S. 124 ", KHM 60 The Two Brothers , Pröhles Kindermärchen No. 36, Basile Pentameron III, 2 Penta Without Hands , Serbian at Wuk No. 27 and 33, Finnish at Rudbeck " 1, 140 ", an old German" Sage about a king who wants a wife like his daughter ”, a Swedish song (“ Geyer 3 ”).

origin

The fairy tale type AaTh 706, which is particularly variable in the opening part, can be seen as a sub-type of the Constanze cycle , which is linked by the father's attempt at incest. Its oldest evidence is Matthaeus Parisiensis ' Vita Offae primi , a girl without hands appears for the first time in Philippe de Beaumanoir's La Manekine (both 13th century). Marian miracles or oriental influences were assumed to be forerunners.

interpretation

Eugen Drewermann explains the daughter's oral personality development and deep tendency to depression: Through the behavior of the father, who exploits his child like an apple tree in times of need, she gets used to extreme responsibility for the salvation of both souls. Conversely, this corresponds to passive supply fantasies and a restlessness in a dreamlike world; in a reversed fall into sin, she learns the permissibility of the forbidden. After the father, the king's generosity must appear divine to her, but it creates feelings of guilt and misunderstandings, as if they lived in distant lands and the devil twisted every word. In loneliness the realization matures that no human, but only God's grace allows us to live innocently. The Christian fairy tale uses images that originally come from lunar mythology. The silver arms are an attribute of the moon goddess as Homer already wrote in his Iliad - " Hera leukolenus, the alabaster arm".

The psychotherapist Jobst Finke also sees the mutilation as a symbol of emotional trauma. Clarissa Pinkola Estés offers a subjective interpretation. The ignorant innocence must first fall for the temptation, in order then to renounce it and to mature further.

Comparisons

KHM 65 Allerleirauh , KHM 179 The goose-girl at the fountain . The plot is similar in Giambattista Basiles Pentameron III, 2 Penta Without-Hands .

reception

The biography of Mariatu Kamara is titled The Girl Without Hands because rebels chopped off both of her hands in the civil war in Sierra Leone .

A film adaptation of the fairy tale is mentioned in the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara .

Sébastien Laudenbach realized the fairy tale as an animated film, which was released in 2016 under the title La jeune fille sans mains .

literature

  • Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm : Children's and Household Tales. With an appendix of all fairy tales and certificates of origin not published in all editions . Ed .: Heinz Rölleke . 1st edition. Original notes, guarantees of origin, epilogue ( volume 3 ). Reclam, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-15-003193-1 , p. 69-72, 455-456 .
  • Hans-Jörg Uther : Handbook to the "Children's and Household Tales" by the Brothers Grimm. Origin, effect, interpretation . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 , pp. 81-83 .
  • Ines Köhler-Zülch: Girls without hands. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 8. pp. 1375-1387. Berlin, New York 1996.
  • Walter Scherf: The fairy tale dictionary . Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39911-8 , pp. 800-807 .
  • Eugen Drewermann , Ingritt Neuhaus (illustrations), Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm : The girl without hands. Fairy tale No. 31 from the Grimm collection . Walter, Olten 1981, ISBN 3-530-16860-2 (The volume contains 48 pages of a handwritten text of the fairy tale, twelve batik pictures (Neuhaus) and a depth psychological interpretation with notes (Drewermann)).
  • Eugen Drewermann , Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm : Dear little sister, let me in. Grimm's fairy tales interpreted in terms of depth psychology . dtv, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-423-35050-4 , p. 23-41 .

Web links

Wikisource: The Girl Without Hands  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Drewermann, Eugen: Landscapes of the soul or what can trust Grimm's fairy tales interpreted in terms of depth psychology, Patmos Verlag, Stuttgart, 2015, pp. 9-10
  2. ^ Jobst Finke: Dreams, Fairy Tales, Imaginations. Person-centered psychotherapy and counseling with images and symbols. Reinhardt, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-497-02371-4 , pp. 210-211, 212.
  3. ↑ Clarissa Pinkola Estés: The Wolf Woman. The power of the female primal instincts. 40th edition. Heyne, Munich 1993, ISBN 978-3-453-13226-9 , pp. 466-506.
  4. ↑ Berlin 2016. pp. 236, 846.