the blue light
The blue light is a fairy tale ( ATU 562). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm at position 116 (KHM 116). A brave soldier is the main character in this fairy tale.
Hans Christian Andersen told a different version of the story in Das Feuerzeug . Among other things, the soldier , the witch and the princess who are forced into lower service are the same characters. With Grimm a little man fulfills the wishes, with Andersen there are three grotesque dogs.
content
A soldier becomes invalid and his king disdainfully abdicates. He pulls away and comes to a witch's house in the forest. The witch gives him three tasks, two he fails, the third is to bring her a blue light from a dry well. He is let down, finds the lamp, but becomes suspicious and does not want to hand it over until he is on solid ground. The angry witch then makes him crash with the light. As he desperately lights his tobacco pipe at the blue light, a small, black man appears and asks: “Lord, what are you ordering?” The soldier lets himself be freed, procures gold and burns the witch, then moves to the royal city and lets herself be three times bring the king's daughter to the room at night so that she can do his maid service. Before dawn she always brings the little man back. The third time she directs the king on the trail, the soldier is caught and led to the gallows. His last request (he mustn't ask for his life) is there to light a pipe. The male reappears, all goes well, and he receives the princess and the kingdom.
Origin and comparisons
Grimm's note noted from Mecklenburg . You suspect the root of the pipe motif in the flute , as in KHM 91 Dat Erdmänneken , the blue light is a will- o'-the-wisp , which has to do with ghosts and dwarfs. Albertus Magnus in Görre's master songs gets the French princess and escapes through a magical ball of yarn when the king paints Paris white and lets his daughter dip her hands in red paint. Pröhle No. 11 and 67; Andersen The Lighter ; Gaal No. 1.
For the flute motif, cf. KHM 28 , 91 , 96 , 126 , 181 , to fight witches and kings KHM 71 , 134 .
Others
The blue light is one of 36 of 228 fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm collection , in which the death penalty was imposed.
The fairy tale type according to the Aarne Thompson Index ( ATU 562) is "Magical Objects".
expenditure
- 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 , pp. 208-209, 490.
Film adaptations
- 1975: The Blue Light (1976) , GDR , DEFA fairy tale film, director: Iris Gusner
- 1975: The fire-red Spielmobil , BR Germany, two-part film adaptation with Frithjof Vierock in the lead role as part of the BR children's series.
- 2000: SimsalaGrimm , German cartoon series: 19th episode: The Blue Light
- 2010: Das Blaue Licht , Germany, fairy tale film of the 3rd season from the ARD series Six in one go with Christoph Letkowski as a soldier and Veronica Ferres as a witch.
Note: Leni Riefenstahl's film The Blue Light is based on a different story.
Audio stories
- 2007: Radio play on Das Blaue Licht by Franz Fühmann (direction) and Reiner Bredemeyer (composition).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Barbara Beier: The unnatural death and other forensic medical issues in the German folk tales , dissertation, accessed on December 17, 2010
- ↑ Jürgen Krätzer: Franz Fühmann: The direction of fairy tales. In: Die Horen , Vol. 1/52, No. 225, 2007, ISSN 0018-4942 , p. 136.