The death shirt

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The death shirt is a fairy tale ( ATU 769). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm in place 109 (KHM 109). There the title The Death Shirt was written . Ludwig Bechstein took it over into his German fairy tale book as Das Tränenkrüglein (1845 No. 27, 1853 No. 26).

content

A mother has a boy whom she loves very much. The child dies at the age of seven. The mother cries a lot, and the child appears at night and cries with her. Finally, it appears to its mother at night in its white shroud and says that the mother must stop crying so that his shroud will dry. The mother comes to terms with her pain and the child finds peace.

origin

Illustration by Otto Ubbelohde , 1909

Grimm's note notes “From Bavaria” (perhaps about Ferdinand Philipp Grimm ) and compares: Meinert 1, 13; Edda second Helgelied Str. 44; a Danish folk song by Ritter Age and Jungfrau Else; Müllenhoff "S. 144 two legends, one from Helmold 1, 78 “; Knapps Christoterpe (1835) “S. 278 "; Wackernagel in Altdeutsche Blätter No. 174 f. and note p. 197. In Grimm's estate there was a variant in which the child has legs made of gold and diamond and only finds rest when they are returned to the grave. Compare also KHM 117 The Stubborn Child and KHM 154 The Stolen Heller . According to Hans-Jörg Uther , Grimm's version is reminiscent of Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg's copy in the consolation mirror , which the Grimm brothers also owned, and who in turn took the consolation story from Thomas Cantipratanus ' Bonum universale de apibus . The wet robe appears for the first time in Helmold von Bosau's Chronica Slavorum (1.79; 12th century). In newer pieces it is often a teardrop jar, as one also found in graves.

Bechstein

In Bechstein's little tears , God sent "a great disease that raged among the children and also seized that child". When the mother cried three days after death, the child shows her the full vessel in which the angel of mourning has collected the tears. According to Hans-Jörg Uther , the material already existed in antiquity, but Bechstein probably followed Grimm's version. Reading books preferred Bechstein's version. The three-day timeframe seems to be biblically influenced ( Mt 12.40  EU , Mk 8.31  EU ).

Motif story

In a monograph by Maria Christa Maennersdoerfer on the narrative type, to which narrative research has given the name Tränenkrüglein based on Bechstein , the oldest evidence is a Syrian narrative from the 9th century AD, first by Peter Nagel (orientalist) from the Syrian has been translated into German. Although the documents of the Syrian Codices are available in the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the German language is the first translation language.

Maria Christa Maennersdoerfer suspects that the source for Grimm's version is the Munich doctor Johann Nepomuk von Ringseis , who used the story therapeutically, possibly Ferdinand Grimm , and Friedrich Christian Beck's poem of the same name, sometimes with identical words , for Bechstein's tears . The clearer picture of the little mug caused its wider aftermath, also in reading books up to the early 20th century. There was a shift from the prop of the heavy robe to the more easily understandable idea of ​​the teardrop jug, perhaps influenced by Ps 56,9  LUT ("God, collect my tears into your jug; without a doubt, you count them.") In the 17th century, as well as lay people used the sermon temple for funeral services and for publications. The idea that grief can be too strong exists all over the world. The present narrative type ATU 769 comes from Christian resurrection belief ( 1 Thess 4.13  EU ), the oldest evidence of Syrian Christians in the 9th century. After the Christian Middle East, variants are documented in Western, Southern and Eastern Europe. Early evidence for Europe are Thomas Cantipratanus ' Bonum universale de apibus (2.53.17; approx. 1270), Jean Gerson's Consolation sur la mort des amis (1403), Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg's Consolation Mirror (1503), a letter of condolence from Antoine de La Sales 1457/58 to Madame de Fresne. Preachers could read the specimen from 1481 in the Speculum exemplorum . Johann Wilhelm Wolf published it in 1845 according to Cantipranus as mother's tears . Wilhelm Busch created the picture story Das todte Gretchen (1880, published 1938).

The homeopath Martin Bomhardt compared the fairy tale with the remedy picture of Causticum .

Movie

The fairy tale inspired Christian Petzold to make the film Ghosts (2005).

literature

  • Grimm, Brothers: Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 533-534. Düsseldorf and Zurich, 19th edition 1999. (Artemis & Winkler Verlag; Patmos Verlag; ISBN 3-538-06943-3 )
  • Grimm, brothers. 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. S. 202, 488. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
  • 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. 245–246.
  • Maennersdoerfer, Maria Christa: The example of obsessive grief. Text certificates and life contexts. With a foreword by Wolfgang Brückner. Duisburg 2011. (PW Metzler; ISBN 978-3-936283-14-3 )

Web links

Wikisource: Das Totenhemdchen  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wikisource: Grimm's note from 1856 on Das Todtenhemdchen
  2. ↑ Rölleke, Heinz (ed.): Fairy tales from the estate of the Brothers Grimm. 5th improved and supplemented edition. Trier 2001. S. 27, 106. (WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier; ISBN 3-88476-471-3 )
  3. ↑ 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. 245–246.
  4. ^ Hans-Jörg Uther (Ed.): Ludwig Bechstein. Storybook. After the edition of 1857, text-critically revised and indexed. Diederichs, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-424-01372-2 , pp. 385-386.
  5. ↑ 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. 245–246.
  6. ↑ Maria Christa Maennersdoerfer: Jug of tears. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 13. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-023767-2 , pp. 861-864.
  7. ^ Martin Bomhardt: Symbolic Materia Medica. 3. Edition. Verlag Homöopathie + Symbol, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-9804662-3-X , p. 416.