The fairy tale of the false prince
The fairy tale of the false prince is a novella by Wilhelm Hauff from the fairy tale almanac for the year 1826 : The talented tailor Labakan is dissatisfied with his status and pretends to be a prince. After his deception is exposed, he turns back to his traditional craft. It is the sixth and last fairy tale in the frame story Die Karawane . The other contributions are: The story of Caliph Storch , The story of the ghost ship , The story of the hand cut off , The salvation of Fatme and The story of Little Muck .
Frame narration Die Karawane
A caravan of merchants moves through the desert, always in fear of the notorious robber chief Orbasan. A rider pretending to be Selim Baruch, nephew of the Grand Vizier of Baghdad, joins them. He recently escaped the violence of a band of robbers and asked to be allowed to join. He is gladly allowed to do so, all the more since he uses a mysterious sign to keep a band of robbers from attacking. He suggests telling stories to one another as a way to overcome the monotony. The sixth - and last - the merchant Ali Sizah tells the tale of the false prince :
Plot of the fairy tale
The tailor journeyman Labakan is dissatisfied with his class and dreams of being a prince. When he reworked a festive dress from the Sultan's court , he did not give it back, but put it on himself and ran away. On his aimless journey he meets the sultan's son Omar, who is on his way to see his father. Omar grew up with his uncle and his appearance is unknown at court. In addition to the meeting point and time, two identifying features were therefore agreed: on his 22nd birthday at the El-Serujah pillar, four days' journey east of Alessandria, he should hand the men waiting there a dagger and say "Here I am, whom you are looking for"; if he receives the answer “Praise be to the prophet who received you!”, he knows that they would bring him to his father. Labakan becomes jealous and believes he is the better prince. He steals the dagger and horse from the sleeping man and rushes to the meeting point, where he successfully pretends to be a prince. Immediately afterwards, Omar also arrives, but is arrested as a fraud and is now regarded as “an insane tailor journeyman from Alessandria”, as the false prince Labakan calls him. Only the sultan's wife, Omar's mother, remains suspicious and demands a sample: Since one of the two is apparently a tailor, both are supposed to make a caftan and a pair of trousers. Labakan actually makes a sumptuous costume while the real prince fails. The Sultan is now in doubt and looks for the fairy Adolzaide, who lives in a cedar forest . She hands him two tightly closed precious boxes, between which the two are asked to choose. On the lid of one is written in diamond letters "Honor and Glory", on the other "Luck and Wealth". Labakan chooses "Fortune and Fortune" while Omar chooses "Honor and Glory". Now the boxes pop open and Omar receives a crown and a scepter , while Labakan finds a needle and thread. The sultan and his son waive any punishment. However, the Sultan advises him to leave the country as soon as possible. When he returned to the old tailor's workshop, he received a terrible beating as punishment for theft, so he sold the box and opened his own tailor's shop with the proceeds. He soon found out that needle and thread are also valuable as apparently small fairy gifts, because the needle sews without his intervention and the thread never runs out. In this way he also achieved fortune and fortune as a tailor.
Interpretation, reception
Labakan does not become a prince, like the poor tailor in the older fairy tale The Brave Little Tailor , but his imposture is not punished, but ultimately rewarded with the fairy gift. In this respect the two fairy tales are similar. Hauff's fairy tale novella is one of the most important sources for Gottfried Keller's novella Clothes Make Man .
Film adaptations
In 1956 the fairy tale was filmed as a Czech-Bulgarian fairy tale film as The False Prince and in 1985 as a German-Czech fairy tale film under the title The False Prince .
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm Hauff: Mährchen for sons and daughters of educated classes . Rieger'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1869, pp. 11–14 (accessed November 20, 2013)
- ^ Wilhelm Hauff: Mährchen for sons and daughters of educated classes . Rieger'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1869, p. 103.
- ↑ Summary according to: Wilhelm Hauff: Mährchen for sons and daughters of educated classes . Rieger'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1869, pp. 103–123.
- ^ Stefan Neuhaus: The game with the reader. Wilhelm Hauff: Work and Effect . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, ISBN 3-525-20827-8 , p. 107 ff .: Chapter: The fairy tale of the false prince
