The clever Urfin and his wooden soldiers

The cunning Urfin and his wooden soldiers is a children's book by the Russian writer Alexander Volkov .

Details

The story was published in 1963 under the original title "Урфин Джюс и его деревянные солдаты" with illustrations by Leonid Wladimirski . This is the second volume in the Emerald City series, which was one of the most popular children's books in Eastern European countries and especially in the GDR . The translator of the long-used German version is Lazar Steinmetz .

action

The shy carpenter Urfin Juice lives in the blue land of the cheese and is avoided by his fellow men. Although he is a skilled craftsman, there is a curse on the devices he makes as they often hurt residents. The toys he made himself did not appeal to the children either, because they were scared. Urfin becomes more and more bitter about this and becomes a misanthropist. He builds a house away from everyone in the forest and serves the evil witch Gingema , for whom he collects the taxes. After the witch's death, he takes over her owl Guamokolatokint .

One day a storm sweeps an extremely resilient weed in Urfin's garden that he cannot get rid of. The more he weeds it, the more it grows. When he complains to the owl of his suffering, the owl advises him to dig up the weeds by the roots, chop them up and let them dry on metal sheets in the sun. The result is a brown powder that, as Urfin soon realizes, can bring dead objects to life. A daring plan matures in the carpenter. He wants to create an army of wooden soldiers in order to conquer the magical land with their help. He quickly subjugates the Blue Land of the Cheekers. Then he turns to the emerald city ruled by Scheuch, but which he cannot conquer as easily as he had hoped. In order to still achieve his goal, Urfin throws a toy clown brought to life over the city wall, who is supposed to look for dissatisfied citizens. He finds one such in Ruf Bilan . This Urfin opens the city gate and is appointed the highest master of ceremonies. No sooner has he conquered the emerald city than he sends several of his wood soldiers to the Violet Land, which is ruled by the Iron Lumberjack. This, too, quickly falls into Urfin's hands. He wants to persuade the Scheuch and the Iron Lumberjack to enter his service, but they refuse. As a punishment, he has her locked in an old tower in front of the city.

The two are now wondering what to do next. Then the saving idea comes to them. They want to send Elli a letter to Kansas asking for help. The message is supposed to be delivered by the Kaggi-Karr crow , who once advised Scheuch to get a clever brain. The crow succeeds in the impossible and finds Ellis' family, which currently hosts Uncle Charlie, a one-legged sailor. Without hesitation, Elli and Uncle Charlie decide to come to the aid of the friends. They can overcome the great desert and mountains that separate the magical land from the rest of the world at various dangers.

With the help of the Käuer the two succeed in freeing the Blue Land from the wooden soldiers stationed there. Then Elli and Uncle Charlie set off for the Emerald City. Kaggi-Karr flies ahead to inform the Scheuch and the Iron Lumberjack of their arrival. The Scheuch passed on this secret so that Urfin can prepare for her arrival. He sends out his wooden police force to report Ellis' arrival.

However, Elli and Uncle Charlie notice in time that the road to the Emerald City is blocked. The crow remembers an underground passage there. Elli and her friends follow this passage, which leads through the realm of the underground ore graves, from which they are shot with arrows. You can reach your goal unnoticed, free the Scheuch and the Iron Lumberjack. Together they set out for the Violet Land of the Winkers, where they defeat the wooden soldiers left there and set up their own army.

Urfin tries in a hurry to enlarge his army when he runs out of magic powder. With his entire army he is now marching towards the army of the winkers. The main weapon of the Winkers is a wooden cannon built by Uncle Charlie. This hurls fire at the wooden soldiers, who flee after the first shot. Urfin is captured, tried and banished. The traitors who worked with him will also be punished. Only Ruf Bilan can escape punishment by fleeing. The previously grim-looking wooden soldiers now have friendly smiling faces and become hard-working workers.

A book goes its own way

If the first volume of the Emerald City series, The Magician of the Emerald City , still adheres closely to its American model The Wizard of Oz , Wolkow goes his own way from the sequel and creates a fairy tale cycle that does not need to hide behind the model. Wolkow also used individual elements of Baum's magical land of Oz in subsequent volumes , but he brought them into a completely separate world. For the present volume Volkov used z. B. the life-giving magic powder, which already played a role in the Oz novels In the Realm of the Wizard Oz and Dorothy and the Patchwork Girl . And frightening figures made of wood were already found in Baum in the novel Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz . By and large, however, Volkov's own creations predominate. With the figure of Urfin Juice he created z. B. a completely independent figure, which in its popularity soon surpassed the basic stock of the figure ensemble around Elli, the Scheuch, the iron lumberjack and the brave lion.

Radio plays

There are three German-language radio play productions for this book:

• The War of the Wood Soldiers , director: Maritta Hübner, adaptation: Ernst Röhl , 50 minutes, Rundfunk der DDR, 1975
• Urfin and his wooden soldiers , director: Dieter Scharfenberg, LITERA junior 1991, MC.
• The clever Urfin and his wooden soldiers , directed by Paul Hartmann, Deutsche Grammophon - Junior 1994, MC.

An audio book version was published in 2007:

• The clever Urfin and his wooden soldiers , read by Katharina Thalbach , Jumbo Neue Medien, 2 CD, ISBN 978-3-8337-1853-3