The two hikers

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The two hikers is a fairy tale ( ATU 613). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 5th edition from 1843 at the position 107 (KHM 107).

content

A light-hearted tailor and a grouchy cobbler wander together. The tailor makes more money because people like him and likes to share with the envious cobbler. A path of two days and one of seven lead through the forest to the royal city. Because they don't know which one is the right one, the shoemaker buys bread for seven days, but the tailor only for two. When they didn't arrive on the third day and the tailor couldn't go any further on the fifth because of hunger, the shoemaker gave him a piece of bread, but poked his eye out for it. This is repeated on the seventh day. After leaving the forest, the shoemaker lets the blind tailor lie under a gallows. In the twilight a hanged man with a crow on his head speaks to the other, so that he can see again who washes himself with the rope. So it comes true for the tailor. He thanks God. On the way he meets a brown foal that he wants to ride, a stork, young ducks and a beehive with honey that he wants to eat, but he is always moved to grace by the animals. He soon became famous in town for his skills and became a court tailor. His former comrade, the court shoemaker, wants to render him harmless. He once told the king that the tailor had measured himself to get the missing crown back, then to depict the castle in wax, to let water bubble in the castle courtyard and to be able to get the king a son. The king threatens the tailor with banishment, imprisonment and death if he does not do so, but the ducks, the bees, the horse and the stork help him. For his wedding to the eldest king's daughter, the shoemaker has to make him shoes and leave town. He throws himself under the gallows in anger and exhaustion. The crows peck out his eyes and he runs into the forest.

language

The story uses many idioms to accurately characterize the characters, some of which are still in use today: Springinsfeld ; Don't let your hair grow gray over it . The maudlin narrative with many Christian references also differs from the simpler narrative style of earlier editions. The central conflict is already expressed in the opening sentence: Mountain and valley do not meet, but the children of men, especially good and bad ones, do. The sentence is already in the baroque novel The adventurous Simplicissimus , which the Brothers Grimm must have appreciated: Simplicissimus meets his comrade, the writer, who once blackened him out of envy with the king.

origin

Grimm's note noted: Based on a story from Holstein (by the student Mein from Kiel ), which is better and more complete than The Crows in earlier editions (which is shorter, similar in the gallows motif). You compare Pauli's Schimpf and Ernst , where a servant tied to a tree hears that a herb makes you see, and a princess heals while his master's eyes are gouged out, as well as the Brunswick collection ( Feen-Mährchen , Braunschweig 1801, no . 7), Helwig's Jewish Legends No. 23, the advice of birds to Sigurd (Fafnismal, Str. 32), saliva for healing dew, with which God heals, or innocent child or virgin blood ( Old German forests 2, 208 and poor Heinrich S. . 175 ff. ), Brunswick Collection pp. 168–180, Little Book for Youth pp. 252–263, Pröhles Märchen für die Jugend No. 1, in Danish at Molbech No. 6, in Norwegian at Asbjörnsen Vol. 2, in Bohemian at Kerle Vol. 1, No. 7 St. Walpurgis Nachttraum or the three journeymen , in Hungarian at Gaal No. 8 the grateful animals , Mailath the brothers (No. 8), Taurus the three animals p. 65, in Serbian at Wuk No. 16. The Persian poet Nisami tells (in Hammer's Story of Fine Oratory In diens , Vienna 1818, p. 116 f.) by Chair, who is treacherously robbed, blinded and mistreated by Scheer, healed by a Kurdish girl, heals the sultan's daughter and finally meets Scheer again, whom a Kurd then kills.

Lothar Bluhm suggested that the text on the soothsaying birds from the collection of fairy tales could decline from 1801, when Grimm only anonymizing as Braunschweiger collection called, and perhaps indirectly to John Paulis Fluctuating collection Schimpf und Ernst of 1522. In the rich vocabulary is Grimm Student Mein may already have been influenced by Grimm's fairy tales.

According to Hans-Jörg Uther , the fairy tale is available in countless variants and already on an ancient Egyptian papyrus as a legal dispute and in Buddhist writings from the 8th century as a story by the brothers Gut-Tat and Bad-Tat.

Cf. in Giambattista Basiles Pentameron IV, 5 The Dragon . See Schneider Hänschen and the knowing animals in Ludwig Bechstein's New German Book of Fairy Tales .

interpretation

For the psychiatrist Wolfdietrich Siegmund , The Two Wanderers are about acceptance or refusal of our path to maturity. Ulla Wittmann also interprets the contrast between the cheerful tailor and the worried shoemaker (subjectively) as a conflict between a one-sided intellectualizing spirit and materialism, which to integrate makes the initially painful path to wholeness.

literature

  • Brothers Grimm: Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition . With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Artemis & Winkler Verlag / Patmos Verlag, 19th edition, Düsseldorf / Zurich, 1999, ISBN 3-538-06943-3 , pp. 518-528.
  • 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. 200–201, p. 487
  • 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. 239–242.
  • Lothar Bluhm: The story of the two hikers (KHM 107). Possibilities and limits of the Grimm philology . In: Helga Bleckwenn (Ed.): Fairy tale characters in the literature of the North and Baltic Sea region . Baltmannsweiler 2011, ISBN 978-3-8340-0898-5 , pp. 5-31.
  • Lothar Bluhm: "Where is the reward for your mercy and justice?" On the example-literary tradition of Grimm's fairy tale "The Two Wanderers" (KHM 107). In: Kreuz- und Querzüge. Contributions to a literary anthropology . Fs. For Alfred Messerli. Edited by Harm-Peer Zimmermann, Peter O. Büttner and Bernhard Tschofen. Hanover: Wehrhahn, 2019, ISBN 978-3-86525-730-7 , pp. 319–336.
  • Ulla Wittmann: I fool forgot the magic things. Fairy tales as a way of life for adults. Ansata, Interlaken 1985, ISBN 3-7157-0075-0 , pp. 27-38.

Web links

Wikisource: The Two Wanderers  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 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. 239-240.
  2. ↑ Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen: Adventurous Simplicius Simpliciccimus. Goldmann, Munich, p. 289.
  3. ↑ Lothar Bluhm: The story of the two hikers (KHM 107). Possibilities and limits of the Grimm philology . In: Helga Bleckwenn (Ed.): Fairy tale characters in the literature of the North and Baltic Sea region . Baltmannsweiler 2011, ISBN 978-3-8340-0898-5 , pp. 21-24, 26-27.
  4. ↑ 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. 239–242.
  5. ↑ Frederik Hetmann: dream face and magic trace. Fairy tale research, fairy tale studies, fairy tale discussion. With contributions by Marie-Louise von Franz, Sigrid Früh and Wolfdietrich Siegmund. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-596-22850-6 , p. 122.
  6. ↑ Ulla Wittmann: I fool forgot the magic things. Fairy tales as a way of life for adults. Ansata, Interlaken 1985, ISBN 3-7157-0075-0 , pp. 27-38.