The clever Gretel
The clever Gretel is a swank ( ATU 1741). From the second edition of 1819 onwards, it is at number 77 (KHM 77) in the children's and house tales by the Brothers Grimm . There the title was written Das kluge Grethel . The Schwank comes from Andreas Strobl's Ovum paschale novum or newly colored Oster-Ayr .
content
A housekeeper who loves to eat and drink with the typical name "Gretel" receives the order from her employer to roast two chickens for him and the expected guest. She gets to work, but as a host and guest, who is a bit long in coming, she first eats one chicken, then the other. In order to avoid her master's criminal court, she plays him and the guest against each other: She scares the guest with the lie that the host wants to cut off his ears, while she tells her master that the guest has stolen the chickens. The guest escapes, the host runs after him. Gretel is happily sitting in her kitchen.
origin
The text is based exclusively on Andreas Strobl's sermon temple Oster-Märl (in Ovum paschale novum or re-colored Oster-Ayr , Salzburg 1710, pp. 23-26), as shown by Wilhelm Grimm's surviving copy. He shortened extravagant descriptions and the instructive conclusion and added u. a. Gretel's nice excuses.
interpretation
The clever Gretel corresponds less to the fairy tale scheme than to the pattern of burlesque and swank . With her three-figure constellation, she could have a role model in the Commedia dell'arte .
The happy immorality of the Gretel story brings it closer to fairy tales like The Three Spinners or The Clever Knecht , where a woman or a member of the class does not care about the prevailing norms. The Brothers Grimm attended by very moral stories in which female virtues - such as diligence, loyalty - or the required top servant moral selflessness were glorified and sacrifice (Gold Marie in Frau Holle ), just too subversive - hedonistic material on to document what "the people" said. It can be assumed that the Grimms were on the side of the people, as they later belonged to the Göttingen Seven , who were shot because of their rebellious democratic ideas.
From a psychoanalytic point of view, Gretel appears as an "id" figure who is not held in check by any "I" or "super-ego", but lets her instincts run free and allows herself to be instantly filled with pleasure. The fairy tale therefore works particularly well on preschool children, as the writer Hanns-Josef Ortheil shows in his work Lo and Lu - A Father's Novel . In the chapter "Fairytale hour" the children interpret the fairy tale pantomically (see excerpt in the entry Lo and Lu ).
literature
- 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 . Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart, reviewed and bibliographically amended edition 1994, ISBN 3-15-003193-1 , pp. 138 and 476.
- 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. 178-181.
- Heinz Rölleke (Ed.): Grimm's fairy tales and their sources. The literary models of Grimm's fairy tales are presented synoptically and commented on (series of literature studies, vol. 35). Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier, 2nd, improved edition 2004, ISBN 3-88476-717-8 , pp. 102-107 and 557-558.
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ His note also gives a master song by Hans Sachs from 1536 in an anonymous copy by Achim von Arnim and Hans Sachs' revision from 1559 and compares Hagen's Gesammtabventure No. XXXVII and Paulis Schimpf and Ernst Bl. 65 .