The fir tree
The Christmas tree ( Danish Grantræet ) is an art fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen . The fairy tale was first published together with the fairy tale The Snow Queen on December 21, 1844 by Andersen in the book edition Nye Eventyr. Første Bind. Anden Samling (Neue Abenteteur, First Volume, Second Collection) published by the publisher CA Reitzel in Copenhagen . The story is structured systematically and schematically.
action
The fairy tale is about the life of a small Christmas tree and its wishes. We accompany him in three stages in his short life. When he stands as a small tree in the forest, his greatest wish is finally to be as big as many of the trees in his neighborhood. He firmly believes that only then will his life really begin. If it were bigger, the birds would build nests in its branches too. They cause him that some of the felled trees become a mast on a ship, and he immediately imagines how far one could look up there from a lookout . Smaller trees, on the other hand, would be beautifully decorated as a Christmas tree and festively set up in a room. That makes him even more impressive. He does not find joy in his present life, although he often enough hears the message around him: “Rejoice in your youth. Rejoice our! Rejoice in your fresh youth. ”The little tree, however, only lives for the future in his mind, which he has only known from hearsay until now.
After spending five years in the forest, his life takes a dramatic turn around Christmas. It is chosen and felled as the Christmas tree. The blows go deep and he suffers. The journey he is going on is also difficult and the separation from everything that was dear to him in the forest hurts. But then he looks forward to what is to come. What do you think will happen on Christmas Eve ? Will there be trees coming out of the forest to admire it? In the afternoon of the big day it is richly decorated and is the center of the evening. However, once it was looted, no one paid any attention to it. At least he can still enjoy the story of his grandfather, who tells the children the fairy tale of Klumpe – Dumpe , who fell down the stairs and still got the princess. He hopes for something similar for himself and is looking forward to the coming day and what will happen next. When he was picked up the next day and left in a dark corner in the attic, he was at a loss. Now, in the third phase of his life, he has enough time to think about his life so far. He longingly remembers how beautiful life in the forest was. He tells the mice that visit him about his life in the forest and they are amazed at how many beautiful things he has experienced by saying: “How happy you were!” And he has to tell them about it again and again and only now will aware of how beautiful it was back then when he was allowed to live freely in the forest. However, he does not give up hope that there will be good times in his further life and secretly hopes that he will have a princess like Klumpe-Dumpe . The rats who also visit him don't like the story of Klumpe-Dumpe , they prefer to hear stories from the pantry. Little by little the audience stays away and once again the fir has to recognize “how happy it once was.” Even the mice, who always listened so attentively, missed the fir, afterwards she realized that it was actually “very pretty “Was. However, the tree continues to hope for the future and the day when it is pulled out again, so it is completely wrong about its future.
When the time comes and you take him outside, he rejoices: Now life begins again, not realizing that the last stage of his life has now begun. He notices that everything around him is green and blooming in fresh spring colors, and realizes how old he has become and how his brown needles trickle down, and remembers the good times he had again: “Gone! past! I would have been happy when I could! Past! over! ”And then the ax rushes down at him and he is chopped up into small pieces. Until the end he remembers the good times when he was still little, until only ashes remain of him. At the end it is said, quite prosaically, that the tree is over “and history too; over, over - and that's how it goes with all stories! "
analysis
The tree at the center of the story is the only thinking figure in the story. He presents himself as her tragic, stupid hero who misses his life almost to the end. The contrast between what the tree thinks and what the reader knows (and some living things tell him too) determines the narrative; this contrast is so clear that the omniscient narrator does not need to comment. The tree's four stages of life consist of its time in the forest, its ascent to the Christmas tree, its deportation to the attic and ultimately its end as firewood. It is only when he is disposed of that he begins to understand that he did not appreciate what he had. And only when it is inevitable does he give up his foolish hopes and speak the key words: “Over! over! ”These words determine the narrative up to the final comment. The lifespan of the young fir is only sketched out - during the time as a Christmas tree, and also the time in the dark attic, as well as the last day of the tree's life, more time is given. The focus is on the time in which the tree's hopes are to be fulfilled. This time is needed to tell about how the tree chases a lifelong dream that it never achieves, in order to end up realizing its error when it is already too late.
Film adaptation and audio book
On October 15, 2010, Polyband released a film adaptation of The Tannenbaum as an animation on DVD together with Andersen's fairy tale adaptation of The Snowman & The Springer .
In 2009, Universal Family published an audio book edition of Der Tannenbaum and other winter tales ( ISBN 9783829105231 ).
Web links
- Grantræet Original Danish text on adl.dk
- The Christmas tree - The fairy tale in German at Weihnachtsstadt.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ The most beautiful fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen: Der Tannenbaum ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on DVD at digitalvd.de. Retrieved May 12, 2013.
- ↑ The Christmas tree and other winter fairy tales at echthoerbuch.de. Retrieved May 12, 2013.
literature
- Hans Christian Andersen: The Christmas Tree . Publisher Schreiber. 2011, ISBN 3-480-22873-9 .
- Hans Christian Andersen: The Christmas Tree . Esslinger Verlag Schreiber. 1998, ISBN 3-480-20191-1 . (with illustrations by Anastassija Archipowa)
- Hans Christian Andersen: The Christmas tree and other winter fairy tales . Universal Family publishing house. 2009, ISBN 978-3-8291-0523-1 . (Audio book)