The twelve brothers

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The twelve brothers is a fairy tale ( ATU 451). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm in position 9 (KHM 9).

content

The king wants to kill his twelve sons if the thirteenth child becomes a girl, so that he alone may inherit the kingdom. The Queen tells this to the youngest son Benjamin, and that she will give them a sign with a flag. A white flag means the child is a boy and they will stay alive, a red one the birth of a daughter and her imminent killing. The sons wait twelve days in the forest before a red flag tells them to die. They swear bloody vengeance on every girl and move into an enchanted house deep in the forest, where they feed on animals. There she finds her sister, who finds out about them after ten years, whereby Benjamin hides her from the others as a precaution. They live in harmony. But when she breaks off twelve white lilies out of ignorance, her brothers become ravens and fly away. At the behest of an old woman, she decides not to speak or laugh for seven years in order to save her brothers. A hunting king finds them and marries them. But his mother slanders the silent ones and gets him to let them burn. The redeemed brethren save them from the flames, and all live happily together. The wicked mother-in-law is executed.

interpretation

The death of the sons is first expressed in the coffins, then in their disappearance and finally in the picking of the lilies. In order to redeem her, the sister has to risk death by keeping silent. Sigmund Freud saw both in being unable to be found and in silence a dream symbol for death (cf. KHM 179 The goose-girl at the fountain ). At the same time, the sister, who through no fault of her own feels guilty of the death of her brothers, indirectly makes herself accused of murder through her silence . Hedwig von Beit explains that the description of family relationships in archetypes corresponds to an early consciousness. This also applies to the division of the brothers into many who represent different abilities in other fairy tales (e.g. KHM 71 , 129 ). The curse causes Grimm often a regression to the animal world , d. H. Death (see KHM 47 ). The homeopath Martin Bomhardt compares the fairy tale with the effect of the homeopathic remedy Causticum ( quick lime ).

Origin and relationship

According to his comments, Jacob Grimm had the fairy tale orally from Niederzwehren (in Hesse , near Kassel ). It probably comes from Dorothea Viehmann , from whom he received it through the French pastors' daughters Julia and Charlotte Ramus in Kassel. He also notes that he added the train with the shirt wash, through which the girl's attention was drawn to her brothers, from an otherwise poorer Hessian story. The note mentions some other fairy tales and legends: Basiles The Seven Doves , Norwegian in Asbjörnsen p. 209 , the Lithuanian fairy tale in the session reports of the Vienna Academie der Wissenschaften 11, 209–212 , for the red banner also Wigalois (6153).

Jacob Grimm's surviving manuscript shows that the name student flower for the lily as well as the special role of the youngest son came to him retrospectively, who was not called Benjamin in the first edition in 1812 either. Only then do details emerge such as the mother's blessing to the departing sons that the daughter will lay the beds white and clean , the phrase that the silence is so difficult "that you won't free her with it" and the tree on which she is sits and barks in front of the dog. In the first edition the father didn't want a girl, "I'd rather cut their heads off myself than have a girl among them." She bleaches the laundry in the meadow. The lilies are not yet in a garden by the house, but in a place in the forest, the silence lasts twelve years. The phrase go as far as the sky is blue was added to the second edition as a popular saying.

Particularly closely related among the children's and house tales are KHM 25 The Seven Ravens , KHM 49 The Six Swans and KHM 96 De Drei Vügelkens . A house in the forest also plays a role in many others (KHM 13 , 22 , 31 , 40 , 53 , 68 , 69 , 93 , 123 , 125 , 127 , 137 , 141 , 163 , 169 ). The motif of the father who wants a daughter corresponds to different versions of KHM 53 Snow White that were not published by the Grimms .

The fairy tale is widespread in Europe. Very similar is already in Basiles Pentameron IV, 8 The seven Täublein , including the sentence “Who are you and where are you going?”, Also III, 3 Viso . On the silent slander, cf. the framework of The Seven Wise Masters . In other versions there were seven or three brothers. A fragment of the text has come down to us from Hittite about a mother who had thirty sons at once and abandoned them in a basket on the Kızılırmak river . The gods save them and raise them. They return to find their mother and meet their thirty sisters. Only the youngest will recognize them.

literature

Primary literature

  • Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 80-84. Düsseldorf and Zurich, 19th edition 1999. (Artemis & Winkler Verlag; Patmos Verlag; ISBN 3-538-06943-3 )
  • Grimm, brothers. 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. P. 32, pp. 445-446. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
  • Rölleke, Heinz (ed.): The oldest fairy tale collection of the Brothers Grimm. Synopsis of the handwritten original version from 1810 and the first prints from 1812. Edited and explained by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 64-69, 354-355. Cologny-Geneve 1975. (Fondation Martin Bodmer; Printed in Switzerland)

variant

  • The fighting brothers. In: Löwis of Menar, August (ed.): Finnish and Estonian fairy tales. Düsseldorf-Cologne 1962. pp. 279-282.

Secondary literature

  • Grimm, Jacob: About women's names made from flowers. Read aloud in the Academy on February 12, 1852. In: Wyss, Ulrich (Ed.): Jacob Grimm. Autobiography. Selected writings, speeches and treatises. Pp. 190-215. Munich 1984. (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag; ISBN 3-423-02139-X )
  • Denecke, Ludwig: Jacob Grimm. Life and personality. In: Denecke, Ludwig. Jacob Grimm and his brother Wilhelm. Pp. 40-46. Stuttgart 1971. (Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH; ISBN 3-476-10100-2 )
  • Meinel, Gertraud: Lily. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 8. pp. 1074-1080. Berlin, New York 1996.
  • Scherf, Walter: The fairy tale dictionary. Second volume L – ZS 1465–1470. Munich 1995. (Verlag CH Beck; ISBN 3-406-39911-8 )
  • Freud, Sigmund: The motif of choosing a box (1913). In: Sigmund Freud. Study edition. Volume X. Fine arts and literature. Pp. 181-193. Frankfurt am Main 1982. (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag; ISBN 3-596-27310-2 )
  • Freud, Sigmund: The guilty criminals. In: Sigmund Freud. Study edition. Volume X. Fine arts and literature. Pp. 252-253. Frankfurt am Main 1982. (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag; ISBN 3-596-27310-2 )
  • Lenz, Friedel: Visual language of fairy tales. 8th edition. Pp. 251-252. Stuttgart 1997. (Verlag Freies Geistesleben und Urachhaus GmbH; ISBN 3-87838-148-4 )
  • Hedwig von Beit: Contrast and Renewal in Fairy Tales. Second volume of «Symbolism of Fairy Tales». 2nd Edition. A. Francke, Bern 1956. pp. 234-242.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Freud, Sigmund: The motif of the box choice (1913). In: Sigmund Freud. Study edition. Volume X. Fine arts and literature. Pp. 181-193. Frankfurt am Main 1982. (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag; ISBN 3-596-27310-2 ); Freud, Sigmund: The guilty criminals. In: Sigmund Freud. Study edition. Volume X. Fine arts and literature. Pp. 252-253. Frankfurt am Main 1982. (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag; ISBN 3-596-27310-2 )
  2. ↑ Hedwig von Beit: Contrast and Renewal in Fairy Tales. Second volume of «Symbolism of Fairy Tales». 2nd Edition. A. Francke, Bern 1956. pp. 234-242.
  3. ^ Martin Bomhardt: Symbolic Materia Medica. 3. Edition. Verlag Homöopathie + Symbol, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-9804662-3-X , p. 416.
  4. ↑ Rölleke, Heinz (ed.): The oldest fairy tale collection of the Brothers Grimm. Synopsis of the handwritten original version from 1810 and the first prints from 1812. Edited and explained by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 64-69. Cologny-Geneve 1975. (Fondation Martin Bodmer; Printed in Switzerland)
  5. ↑ Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 862-863. Düsseldorf and Zurich, 19th edition 1999. (Artemis & Winkler Verlag; Patmos Verlag; ISBN 3-538-06943-3 )
  6. ↑ Klinger, Jörg. The Hittites. Munich 2007. p. 76. (Verlag CH Beck; ISBN 978-3-406-53625-0 )

Web links

Wikisource: The Twelve Brothers  - Sources and full texts