The two brothers
The two brothers is a fairy tale ( ATU 567, 300, 303). It is in the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 2nd edition of 1819 in place 60 (KHM 60) as the longest magical fairy tale .
content
The story is about two brothers, one of whom is a rich and evil goldsmith , the other a poor and good broom-maker . The broom-maker meets a bird from which he chases a feather that turns out to be golden . He gets a lot of money from his brother Goldschmied for this. This is repeated when he goes to his rich brother with a golden egg of the bird. The third time, the broom-maker kills the bird and again brings it to his brother, who also this time pays him and lets his wife roast the bird, knowing that whoever eats the bird's heart and liver will house a piece of gold every day will find his pillow.
The broom-maker has two children, twin brothers , who are allowed to eat some of the rich man's garbage in the goldsmith's house and who happen to eat the coveted parts of the bird, whereupon the announced happiness is bestowed on them. The goldsmith enviously slandered the two children and managed to get their father to cast them out and drive them out of the house. They get lost in the forest and meet a hunter there who takes them in instead of children, teaches them to hunt and keeps the gold pieces found every morning for the future of the children.
When they are old enough, the foster father takes them into the forest, tests their skills and approves them after they have passed the exam. At dinner together, the brothers tell the foster father that they now want to go out into the world, in which he happily recognizes their right hunting. He gives everyone a good box and a dog to say goodbye and they can take as much as they want from the gold they have saved. He also gives them a knife with which, should they have to part, they can see on their return whether the other is still alive. To do this, they have to ram it into a tree. Metallic smoothness or rust on the side of the blade that points in whichever direction the other is pulled indicates their life or death.
Hungry on their hike, the two brothers want to shoot a rabbit , but he asks for his life and gives them two of his cubs in return, but they don't have the heart to kill them and who then follow them on the heels. They encounter other animals in the same way, so that finally two rabbits, two foxes , two wolves , two bears and two lions follow and are at their service. Still hungry, they finally buy something to eat for themselves and their animals in a village.
Since they cannot find a job together, they have to separate, each split up the animals, promise each other brotherly love until death and, as instructed by the foster father, push the knife into a tree and drag one to the east and one to follow West.
The younger comes to a city in mourning because the next day the only king's daughter has to be sacrificed to a seven-headed dragon living in front of the city so that it does not destroy the city. With the help of his animals, a magic potion that he finds in a small church, and a sword that was buried in front of the church, the hunter boy can defeat the dragon. The king's daughter is pleased to see the promised husband in him. But before they return to the king, they go to bed exhausted with all the animals. An evil and godless Marshal finds the tight sleeping, the hunter chops off his head, forcing the princess by the threat of death to return with him to lie to the Father and to confirm that he had defeated the dragon. But she can postpone the wedding for another year and hopes that she will hear something from her dear hunter again.
The animals are gradually waking up on the Drachenberg. Using their different knowledge and their magical powers, they succeed in bringing the hunter back to life with a root that is growing far away. The head that was initially put back the wrong way round can also be correctly aligned again. The hunter wandered around sadly with his animals until after a year he came back to the city where the marriage between the king's daughter and the marshal was being prepared. The hunter gradually sends his animals to the king's daughter, who she recognizes by the collars that she herself gave them as a thank you and gives them one after the other bread, roast meat, vegetables, sugar and wine from the king, which the hunter uses to show her continued love recognizes to him.
At the wedding table, the king asks his daughter what the wild animals would have wanted, and since she is not allowed to uncover the truth, she asks him to ask the Lord of the Beasts at the table. When the marshal shows the stolen seven heads of the dragon as evidence of his deeds, the hunter unmasked him by showing the seven tongues as symbols of victory, which he tore from the heads of the dragons and kept in a handkerchief with the embroidery of the king's daughter. Twelve councilors pass a death sentence on the marshal and the king hands over his daughter and his kingdom to the true savior.
So they live happily for a while, until the young king chases a snow-white doe in a magical forest and follows it until it is dark and he gets lost. A freezing old woman, who is in truth a witch , outwits him, so that all his animals and himself freeze to stone and are laid by the witch in a ditch in which other petrified beings are already lying.
Meanwhile, the twin brother, who wasn't so lucky, looks for the knife in the tree and sees on the half-rusted blade that his brother is still alive, but must be doing very badly. In his search for him he comes to town and is mistaken for his king brother because of his appearance and the same animals in the wake. In order to best save his brother, he allows the deception, only in the royal bed does he put his sword between himself and his brother's wife. When he has learned enough, he follows the ways of his brother, also gets on the witch, but does not fall for her, can overcome her and free the brother, his animals and a whole crowd of merchants , craftsmen and shepherds , all of whom are in fell under the witch's spell.
The twin brothers are delighted and tell each other their stories on the way back to town. When the king's brother hears that his brother was lying in bed with his wife, he chops off his head out of jealousy , but he immediately regrets that, so that he is glad that the animals have their heads again this time with the help of the root of life be able to sit up and bring the dead to life.
To the amazement of the townspeople, the two brothers and their animals move into town from two sides at the same time. The king's daughter can recognize her husband from the animal's collars. When the wife asks in the royal bed why he put a sword between her and himself last night, he realizes how loyal his brother was to him.
Comparisons
KHM 85 Die Goldkinder , KHM 122 Der Krautesel , KHM 74a Von Johannes-Wassersprung and Caspar-Wassersprung , KHM 104a The loyal animals . In Giambattista Basiles Pentameron I, 7 The Merchant , I, 9 The Insidious Doe , IV, 1 The Rooster Stone . The three dogs in Ludwig Bechstein's German Fairy Tale Book and The Wandering Journeyman in New German Fairy Tale Book .
The most important source for the fairy tale of The Two Brothers is the Egyptian fairy tale about Bata - about which The Two Brothers is connected with the Grimm fairy tale The Gold Children . The storytelling tradition of the Bata fairy tale continues to develop along the lines of the two-brother fairy tale .
The proof of the killing of a dragon by its tongues can also be found in ancient legends and in the Middle Ages with Tristan and Isolde , cf. also KHM 111 The trained hunter . Separation and recognition are popular structural schemes in Hellenistic novels and many Grimm fairy tales like this one.
Grimm's remarks
The basic pattern of the two brothers follows a story from Paderborn (probably by the von Haxthausen family ). At the beginning they compare a fragment "from Hessen", which was in the first edition as Das Goldei in position 60 (KHM 60a), and name a Serbian fairy tale ( in Wuk no. 26 ) and a Russian ( in Dietrich no. 9 ) . From the point where the forester takes the children in, they followed "an excellent and detailed story from the Hessian Schwalm area" (probably by Ferdinand Siebert ), which only begins here.
Another "strange entrance": a princess is being chased by mice. The king puts them in a tower in the river. Once a jet of water comes through the window. She lets her servant put a vessel down, they drink from it and give birth to two identical sons, Water Peter and Water Paul. They put them in a box on the water, a fisherman catches them and trains them to be hunters. The rest is as in the version above, but with only three animals each and less than that. Wasserpeter meets with his animals a cat on a tree that wants to warm itself by the fire and lets him put three hairs on the animals, then they are dead. She shows him two wells with water of death and life, with which he brings the animals and then resuscitated the brother slain of jealousy. The similar, "fourth Hessian story" corresponds to Von Johannes-Wassersprung and Caspar-Wassersprung from the first edition (KHM 74a).
A fifth story: A fisherman drops a golden box from the sky into the net, with the two boys in it. The dragon is killed by throwing a poisonous roll into the throat. The fake bridegroom wants to poison the hunter, but the animals notice it. The witch turns him to stone, his brother forces her to show him the snake under a stone, with whose fat he has to rub him.
In a sixth story "from Zwehrn" (probably by Dorothea Viehmann ) three sisters have three goats. Her brother tends them and exchanges them for three dogs at a hunter's for three days, while the hare, deer and bear are added along the way. In a small forest house an old woman warns him about twelve robbers, but he relies on his animals. The robbers come, pretend to be friendly, but turn their knives the wrong way to eat, he does the right thing. "Why don't you lay your knife like us?" "I legs like a hunter, but you lay it like rascals." They want to kill him, the animals tear them apart. The rest is like above again. At the wedding, the animals ask that he cut off their heads, then they are redeemed (as in KHM 57 The Golden Bird ).
You still list many references and trace the fairy tale back to the Sigurd saga and the saga of the blood brothers. For the knife, with which the vein to blood brotherhood was perhaps originally carved, they refer to the note on KHM 97 The Water of Life , on petrification on KHM 6 The Faithful John , on the dragon fight on Thor's fight against the Midgard serpent .
interpretation
According to Wilhelm Salber , the actors look for figures that shape the moving material, with duplications, splits, reflections and refractions. A psychoanalytic interpretation is presented by Eugen Drewermann , who considers this fairy tale to be prototypical for all fairy tales. It contains all the important fairy tale motifs and describes the adventurous path of a man who matures from the ambiguous figure of his father as a broom-maker and goldsmith to unity with himself in love. It is a man's tale beyond the hero role.
photos
Kay Nielsen created a very complex fairytale picture for Grimm's The Two Brothers . In his filigree painting style, rich in motifs, Nielsen places the dragon fight in the center of the action, as in a tabernacle the blonde princess crouches in the background under a canopy made of Gothic buttresses and spiers. Below the stage-like dragon fight scene on the rock, the helping animals cavort: hare, lion, wolf, bear, eagle and fox, the treacherous court marshal with plumed hat looks around the corner with scheming caution. The little rabbit peeps worriedly at his master over the edge of the stage on the rock plateau.
Nielsen marked the picture with the fairy tale quote “Then the dragon made a dart at the hunter, but he swung his sword round and cut off three of the beast's head.” (In the fairy tale original: “The dragon drove against the hunter, but he swung his sword, so that it sang in the air, and cut off three heads. ")
Movie
- The third prince or Treti Princ after Karel Jaromír Erben , ČSSR 1982 with Libuse Safránková as Princess Milena and her sister, Pavel Trávnícek as twin brothers and Nada Konvalinková - this film partly contains motifs from The Two Brothers - but here the fairy tale is on the Twin motif, a dragon does not appear - the fairy tale by Karel Jaromír Erben O dvou bratřích , after which this film was made, can be interpreted as a variant of The Two Brothers . The dragon from the Grimmtale The Two Brothers can be found in the Czech fairy tale Prince Bajaja
- Prince Bajaja or Princ Bajaja under the direction of Antonín Kachlík ČSSR 1971 with Ivan Palúch as Bajaja and Magda Vášáryová as Princess Slavena; Fairy tale based on Božena Němcová - The Bajaja fairy tale by Němcová only touches on the twin motif, but comprehensively elaborates on the dragon motif from The Two Brothers . In the fairy tale film, the twin motif, which was stunted by Němcovás Bajaja, has completely disappeared. However, as in Němcová, the Bajaja fairy tale combines in the film with the fairy tale Der Eisenhans .
literature
- Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 338-357. 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. Pp. 114-119, 468-469. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
- Uther, Hans-Jörg : Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Berlin 2008. pp. 147-150. (de Gruyter; ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kurt Derungs on the twin brother fairy tale in www.maerchenlexikon.at
- ^ Röhrich, Lutz: Fairy tale - myth - legend. In: Siegmund, Wolfdietrich (ed.): Ancient myth in our fairy tales. Kassel 1984. p. 15. (Publications of the European Fairy Tale Society Vol. 6; ISBN 3-87680-335-7 )
- ^ Wilhelm Salber: fairy tale analysis (= work edition Wilhelm Salber. Volume 12). 2nd Edition. Bouvier, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-416-02899-6 , pp. 121-124.
- ↑ Eugen Drewermann: Snow White. The two brothers. Grimm's fairy tales interpreted in terms of depth psychology. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2003. ISBN 978-3-4233-4020-5
- ↑ The Two Brothers Color Image No. 53 in Nielsen's Fairy Tale Illustrations in Full Color, Dover Publications, INC .; Mineola New York 2006 ISBN 978-0-486-44902-9 : Illustration from Nielsen's illustration for The Two Brothers
