The Eisenhans

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The iron man in the cage
The prince as a mysterious knight

Eisenhans is a fairy tale ( ATU 314). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 6th edition of 1850 at position 136 (KHM 136) and is partly based on The iron Hans in Friedmund von Arnim's collection Hundred new fairy tales collected in the mountains (first edition 1844).

action

A king has a large forest with many wild animals in it. He sends a hunter out to shoot a deer there, but the hunter doesn't come back. The king sends out several more hunters to investigate the whereabouts of the first, but not a single hunter returns from the forest. After all, nobody dares venture into the forest anymore.

One day a new hunter comes along and walks through the forest with his dog. The dog finds the danger spot in the form of a pool, at the bottom of which a wild man, who is rust-brown in color all over his body, dwells and pulls people and animals into the depths. The hunter allows the pool to be scooped out and takes the wild man, who is called "Eisenhans" because of the color of his skin, captured.

Eisenhans is held captive in a cage in the king's court. The king's son lets himself be persuaded by the wild man to steal the key to the cage that is under his mother's pillow and to let him go. The wild man takes the king's son with him and hides with him again in the forest. From now on, the prince's son is to watch over a special fountain of the wild man, in which everything that gets into it is gilded. But three times he makes the mistake of letting something fall into it (especially his own long hair) and is therefore sent away by Eisenhans. However, he promises the king's son to help him if necessary.

The son no longer returns to his father's court. He travels the world, takes a job as a gardener for another king and falls in love with the king's daughter, who is also very fond of him. When this king gets involved in a war with another realm, the young prince enlists the help of Iron Hans for the first time and with his help defeats the enemy, but immediately disappears from the scene again. To lure the stranger out and thank him for his help, the king organizes a tournament in which his daughter is supposed to throw a golden apple among the participants. The prince cannot resist the temptation and appears, dressed up as a knight by Eisenhans, on the three festive days in a row to catch the apple. The third time, however, he is exposed and confronted by the king's people, he confesses his true origin and asks for the hand of the princess, which both the king and his daughter willingly give him.

During the wedding celebration, however, not only the prince's parents arrive, who can then embrace their lost son again, but also another proud king with an entourage. He greets the king's son, identifies himself as Eisenhans, explains to the prince that he has freed him from a curse, and bequeaths all his wealth to him in gratitude.

style

The lively, imaginative plot oscillates between the royal court and the forest as a typical fairytale seat of magic . The simple form of pure folk tale far exceeding, it starts with the hunter episode prior to the appearance of the hero, the refinement it assumes the second half of the text in enhancing reps at the court. Eisenhans is characterized by iron and gold in a scene-dependent variation: skin like rusty iron, iron cage, iron war people. Its swords flash in the sun like gold balls, gold fountains, gold hairs and gold apples. The finger injured on the cage is gilded at the fountain, and the princess's hair, which is also gilded and shamefully hidden, is revealed. So the prince also goes through a development, parallel to the redemption of the wild man from the pool to the gold well, from cage and curse.

interpretation

Hedwig von Beit , after comparing it with deep culture tales in Eisenhans, suspects an original twin brother, whose enchantment by a negative mother figure is still indicated in the key under her pillow (cf. The King's Son Ring and the Dog Snati-Snati ). As unassimilated unconscious content, it steals energy, which in other fairy tales of Prince's journey triggers (e.g. KHM 57 ). The old king catches him because of his prophetic knowledge, like Midas the Silenus , King Numa the forest demons Faunus and Picus , Solomon the ghost prince Ashmodai or King Rodarchus the forest man Merlin . Nature spirits at spring and harvest festivals are often called wild men , and they wear shaggy hair or moss. In the Mediterranean region they resemble Pan , Silenus and Faunus, in Russia Lyeschi , who adapts his shape to the surroundings and steals children, which in Eisenhans is explained by the child's fear of punishment. The allusions to iron also apply to metal men and giants (as in KHM 97 , 165 , variants of KHM 116 ) and thus influences of alchemy (cf. KHM 99 ), which belong to the animal brothers of old Middle Eastern sources (see also KHM 126 ) in Europe seem to cover up. Mithras has golden hair. Zosimos calls the alchemist the child of the golden head . The learned New Year's Eve II is said to have had a golden head that gave him oracles. The light brother is the disturber and liberator of the dark, who gives him the necessary magical help via the anima to become conscious. The vocation may only be shown in the world if it also shows deeds (cf. KHM 29 , 101 ). Instead of covering up the sun's hair, it can be replaced by a servant (as in KHM 89 ). Also Ulla Wittmann sees hero and iron Hans a mythological pair of friends, which develops parallel in four stages, respectively, and compares Chadir (18 Koran Sure ), KHM 6 Faithful John , KHM 57 The golden bird . For Christa Siegert , Eisenhans is the will that is cultivated in the cage of the commandments, but remains unfree. He can freely give the understanding soul the perfect, but it hurts itself and uses the spiritual water of life egoistically. Wilhelm Salber sees a dialectic between devouring unity and living development. The two demands and fates are incompatible, but every decision would be treason. A third way must come out of both, with transgressions being tested. According to the pattern of the prodigal son, one looks for “revolt and being loved, to combine danger and faithful rescue at the last moment.” The psychotherapist Jobst Finke also thinks of legends like Rübezahl and sees the development of the unworldly boy into a strong knight paternal assistance and identification. The text helped an employee who grew up fatherless and was not able to assert himself to verbalize his experiences of conflict.

origin

From the 6th edition onwards, Eisenhans replaced the similar De wilde Mann as no. 136. Grimm's note mentions the “Maingegenden” ( Regina Husband ) and Der eiserne Hans in Friedmund von Arnim's collection A hundred new fairy tales collected in the mountains as the source . The latter has the episode with the fountain and the golden hair, which he then hides under the cap, for which the king expels him from the table, the wild flowers for the princess and the three balls and different colored horses. When revising the gold and iron symbols, Wilhelm Grimm was probably also reminded of KHM 1 The Frog King or the Iron Heinrich , where in his version the servant is also redeemed as a mystical brother.

The annotation compares KHM 21 Cinderella , KHM 65 Allerleirauh , an Austrian fairy tale about the boot kick who lives as a bear under the stairs, and everyone pushes him and cleans his boots on him, Jewish legends about Aschmadai , a fairy tale by Vulpius , at Müllenhoff No. 12, by Wolf p. 269, Sommer p. 86, 133, 135, Zingerle No. 28 and 33, p. 198, Norwegian by Asbjørnsen p. 74, Danish by Winther p. 31, Italian by Straparola 5, 1, Russian at Dieterich No. 4, Bohemian at Milenowski No. 6 and the famous Norwegian King Harald the Hairy Beauty in Flatöbuch . In a fairy tale from Grimm's estate, an old soldier becomes king when his magical white horse from a witcher's castle lets him win the battle three times.

After comparing the texts, the fairy tale researcher Hans-Jörg Uther comes to the conclusion that Wilhelm Grimm designed the fairy tale only on the basis of De wilde Mann and Arnim's Der eiserne Hans , the content of which is partly based on De wilde Mann . Arnim took gold fingers and gold hair as a sign of the transgression of taboos from Andreas Justinus Kerner's fairy tale Goldener (1813). Another literary model is The Iron Man, or: The Reward of Obedience from Christian August Vulpius ' collection of Ammenmärchen (1791). The oldest written forerunner of the Wild Man passage is Straparola 5.1 (1550/53). The undetected tournament participation occurs in medieval chivalric novels . Philine in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister also has flowers brought.

variants

In the Greek fairy tale collection of Johannes Mitsotakis there is a variant of Eisenhans entitled Der wilde Mann , which is extremely similar to the Grimm fairy tale, although the story of the parents' recovery is detailed here. François Cadic passed down a Breton variant of Eisenhans Georgic and Merlin in his French fairy tale collection La Paroisse bretonne . There are several variants of Eisenhans among the Danish folk tales: Hans with the golden hair is similar to Grimms Eisenhans . Here, however, the wild man is a hostile merman, and split off from this there is a helping natural power in a speaking horse. The Norwegian fairy tale The Good Sword connects Eisenhans with the fool prince motif of Prince Bajaja and the prince's path leads to victory via the three figures of the black, white and red knight. In Sweden there is an almost identical Eisenhans variant The Princess on the Glass Mountain . Here Eisenhans meets a princess with light features of Snow White . In addition, the iron Hans fairy tale Queen Crane, which integrates the animal help motif, can be found in Sweden . The important Eisenhans motif of the red, white and black knight connects the Eisenhans fairy tale with the Russian magical fairy tale Wassilissa the beautiful . One of the most significant fairy tales on the side of Grimm's Iron Man is Prince Bajaja, the Czech dragon battle tale by Božena Němcová : Here, as there, the gardener's role as a gatekeeper has a mysteriously saving meaning. The three appearances of the knight and his recognition through caught apples make these two fairy tales surprisingly close to each other. On the bad horse, cf. Golden cockerel in Ludwig Bechstein's German book of fairy tales .

Receptions

FW Buri wrote a cycle of poems on Eisenhans. Robert Bly's book Eisenhans. A book about men. analyzes the development of healthy masculinity.

Movies

photos

Ignatius Taschner created illustrations for Der Eisenhans for the square-format Art Nouveau art book series Gerlach's Jugendbücherei at Gerlach & Wiedling . The equipment includes seven colored pictures and seven black-and-white or three-colored vignettes. The color pictures thematize: 1. The bound wild man captured , 2. The boy flees on the shoulders of the wild man with the gold ball in his hands , 3. The gold fountain and the breaking of taboos in which the boy's hair falls into the golden water 4. The boy wanders into the world - his golden hair is hidden under his cap (smaller picture), 5. At the king's court - the unrecognized boy as a kitchen boy at the stately table (smaller picture), 6. The call to Eisenhans - the golden-haired one Rider in the toadstool forest asks the wild man's help for King 7. The victorious golden rider in black armor and on the black horse.

Otto Ubbelohde and Lizzie Hosaeus also created important illustrations for the Iron Hanseatic tale. By Paul Hey iron Hans picture is the golden-haired boy as a gardener wild flowers worth mentioning.

literature

Primary literature

  • Friedmund von Arnim: A hundred new fairy tales collected in the mountains . Edited by Heinz Rölleke. First edition. Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Cologne 1986, pp. 25-27, pp. 109-115 ISBN 3-424-00891-5
  • 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. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition. Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, pp. 230-231, pp. 496-497 ISBN 3-15-003193-1
  • Rölleke, Heinz (Ed.): Grimm's fairy tales and their sources. The literary models of the Grimm fairy tales are presented synoptically and commented on. 2., verb. Edition, Trier 2004. pp. 152-169, 561-562. (Scientific publishing house Trier; series of literature studies vol. 35; ISBN 3-88476-717-8 )
  • Anne Sexton: Metamorphoses - AS's Grimm fairy tales in the form of poems, preferably for adults - S. Fischer Verlag, FFM 1995;

Secondary literature

  • Uther, Hans-Jörg: Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Berlin 2008. pp. 288-292. (de Gruyter; ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 )
  • Scherf, Walter: The fairy tale dictionary. First volume AK. Pp. 251-256. Munich, 1995. (Verlag CH Beck; ISBN 3-406-39911-8 )
  • Röhrich, Lutz: Fairy Tales and Reality. Second expanded edition. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1964, pp. 13, 19, 76, 108, 117-118, 122-123, 210, 238-239.
  • Dammann, Günter: Goldener. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 5. pp. 1372-1383. Berlin, New York, 1987.
  • Dammann, Günter: Mann: Der wilde M .. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchen. Volume 9. pp. 218-222. Berlin, New York, 1999.

Interpretations

  • von Beit, Hedwig: Symbolism of the fairy tale. Bern, 1952. p. 468. (A. Francke AG, Verlag)
  • von Beit, Hedwig: Contrast and renewal in fairy tales. Second volume of «Symbolism of Fairy Tales». Second, improved edition, Bern 1956. pp. 308-318, 322, 325, 330, 371, 408, 409, 441, 572, 630. (A. Francke AG, Verlag)
  • Lenz, Friedel: Visual language of fairy tales . 8th edition. Free Spiritual Life and Urachhaus GmbH, Stuttgart, 1997, pp. 226-238 ISBN 3-87838-148-4
  • Wittmann, Ulla: I fool forgot the magic things. Fairy tales as a way of life for adults . Ansata-Verlag, Interlaken 1985, pp. 47-60 ISBN 3-7157-0075-0 .
  • Kast, Verena: Family conflicts in fairy tales. A psychological interpretation . dtv, Munich 1988, pp. 104-130. ISBN 3-530-42102-2
  • Christa M. Siegert: Secret message in fairy tales. A decryption by Christa M. Siegert with seven graphics by B. Schollenberg. Hermanes T. Verlag, 1991. ISBN 3-925072-04-7 . Pp. 110-140.
  • Stumpfe, Ortrud: The symbolic language of fairy tales. 7th, improved and expanded edition 1992. Münster. P. 34, 47–48, 52, 56, 58, 62, 65–69, 147, 197, 223. (Aschendorffsche Verlagbuchhandlung; ISBN 3-402-03474-3 )
  • Bly, Robert: Eisenhans. A book about men . Rowohlt, 2005. ISBN 3-49962-015-4 .
  • Wilhelm Salber: fairy tale analysis (= work edition Wilhelm Salber. Volume 12). 2nd Edition. Bouvier, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-416-02899-6 , pp. 87-89.
  • Edith Helene Dörre: The precious stone foundation. A homeopathic path of development through 13 gemstones and fairy tales. Novalis, Schaffhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-907160-66-4 , pp. 99-152.
  • Jobst Finke: dreams, fairy tales, imaginations. Person-centered psychotherapy and counseling with images and symbols. Reinhardt, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-497-02371-4 , pp. 151–152, 158, 171–178, 202, 211–212, 215–216.
  • Gerhardus Lang: Archetypal Images: "The Eisenhans". In: Gudjons current. Vol. 18 / No. 2 - 4/2013, Augsburg, pp. 54-70.

Web links

Wikisource: Der Eisenhans  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ by Beit, Hedwig: Contrast and Renewal in Fairy Tales. Second volume of «Symbolism of Fairy Tales». Second, improved edition, Bern 1956. pp. 308-318. (A. Francke AG, publisher)
  2. ↑ Wittmann, Ulla: I fool forgot the magic things. Fairy tales as a way of life for adults. Interlaken 1985. pp. 47-60. (Ansata-Verlag; ISBN 3-7157-0075-0 )
  3. ↑ Christa M. Siegert: Secret message in fairy tales. A decryption by Christa M. Siegert with seven graphics by B. Schollenberg. Hermanes T. Verlag, 1991. ISBN 3-925072-04-7 . Pp. 110-140.
  4. ^ Wilhelm Salber: fairy tale analysis (= work edition Wilhelm Salber. Volume 12). 2nd Edition. Bouvier, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-416-02899-6 , pp. 87-89.
  5. ^ Jobst Finke: Dreams, Fairy Tales, Imaginations. Person-centered psychotherapy and counseling with images and symbols. Reinhardt, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-497-02371-4 , pp. 151–152, 158, 171–178, 202, 211–212, 215–216.
  6. ↑ Rölleke, Heinz (ed.): Fairy tales from the estate of the Brothers Grimm. 5th improved and supplemented edition. Trier 2001. pp. 28–30, 106. (WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier; ISBN 3-88476-471-3 )
  7. ↑ Dammann, Günter: Mann: Der wilde M .. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchen. Volume 9. pp. 218-222. Berlin, New York, 1999.
  8. ↑ Uther, Hans-Jörg: Handbook to the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm. Berlin 2008. pp. 288-292. (de Gruyter; ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 )
  9. ↑ Der wilde Mann pp. 1–15 in Selected Greek Folk Tales edited by Johannes Mitsotakis with four illustrations by P. Geh; Publishing house by GM Gauernheimer; Berlin, 1889
  10. ↑ cf. Nordic folk tales, Part 1 Denmark / Sweden translated by Klara Stroebe therein: pp. 55–67; Eugen Diederichs-Verlag, Jena 1922
  11. ↑ cf. Nordic folk tales, Part 1 Denmark / Sweden translated by Klara Stroebe therein: pp. 47–51; Eugen Diederichs-Verlag, Jena 1922
  12. ↑ cf. Nordic folk tales, Part 1 Denmark / Sweden translated by Klara Stroebe therein: pp. 262–275; Eugen Diederichs-Verlag, Jena 1922
  13. ↑ cf. Nordic folk tales, Part 1 Denmark / Sweden translated by Klara Stroebe therein: pp. 275–279; Eugen Diederichs-Verlag, Jena 1922
  14. ↑ Wassilissa die Wunderschöne pp. 7–24 in Russian fairy tales retold by Elisabeth Borchers with illustrations by Ivan Bilibin Insel Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1974 ISBN 3-458-33308-8
  15. ↑ Božena Němcová: Prince Bajaja in Karel Jaromír Erben and Božena Němcová : Märchen , pp. 86–95; illustrated by Josef Lada translated by Günther Jarosch and Valtr Kraus; Albatros Publishing House, Prague 2001; ISBN 80-00-00930-7
  16. ↑ cf. Fairy tales - Brothers Grimm in Gerlach's youth library - children and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm - texts viewed by Hans Faungruber - pictures by Ign. Taschner - Der Eisenhans pp. 27–46; Publishing house Gerlach and Wiedling; Vienna and Leipzig, in the approved reprint of the first edition by Parklandverlag Stuttgart