Glasberg

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Glasberg (disambiguation) .

The glass mountain is a motif that occurs in folk tradition, especially in magic fairy tales . It is based on the idea of ​​a transparent but insurmountable smooth mountain , which is stereotypically called the Glasberg .

In the fairy tale a mountain of glass appears as an obstacle to lost spouses ( KHM 92 , 93 , 127 , 137 , 193 , 196 , 197 , 59a ) or siblings (KHM 25 ), occasionally also during the magical escape (KHM 79 , 127 ). At the same time, mountains are often inhabited by supernatural beings (KHM 122 , 193 ), as in myth (e.g. Olympus ). In KHM 25 The Seven Ravens and variants of KHM 53 Snow White are the dwarfs who, according to CG Jung, represent the ghost. The man overcomes it mostly through miraculous gifts , the woman partly through sacrifices (e.g. cut fingers), as in Bechstein's millet thief and The White Wolf .

Donald Ward from the Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales reports on the afterlife of shamans as well as burial customs among Lithuanians and Latvians (who knew amber ), with lynx or bear claw as grave goods to overcome the glass mountain. For the idea of ​​an amber, crystal or gold island there are passages in Pliny the Elder. Elder ( Naturalis Historia 37, 42), one at Gottfried von Viterlo or Arthurian legends where Arthur spent his childhood on the island of Glastonbury, Erek , the Wolf Dietrich epic (V. 289 sq.) And Ulrich von Zatzikhovens Lancelot (cycle V. 205-211).

See also

• Diamantberg (KHM 122 , 152 ; 1001 Nights : Second Voyage from Sindbad the Navigator )
• Magnetberg (1001 Nights: The Story of the Third Calendar ; Duke Ernst )
• Glass ball (occultism) (KHM 1 , 136 , 197 )
• The glass mountain , motif or title collection

literature

• Donald Ward: Glasberg. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales . Volume 5: Fort - God. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1987, ISBN 3-11-010588-8 , pp. 1265-1270.
• Donald Ward: Mountain. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 2: Be - Chri. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1979, ISBN 3-11-008091-5 , pp. 138-146.
• Ortrud Stumpfe: The symbolic language of fairy tales. 7th improved and enlarged edition. Aschendorff, Münster 1992, ISBN 3-402-03474-3 , pp. 56-57, 72-73, 181, 185.
• Klaus E. Müller : Shamanism. Healers, spirits, rituals. 3. Edition. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-41872-4 , pp. 39-40 ( Beck'sche series 2072).

Web links

• The glass mountain , treatise by Otto Huth

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Carl Gustav Jung : On the phenomenology of the spirit in fairy tales. In: CG Jung: Collected Works. Volume 9, Half Volume 1: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Olten, Zurich et al. 1976, ISBN 3-530-40797-6 , pp. 238-239.