Virgin Maleen

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Virgo Maleen is a fairy tale ( ATU 870). It is in the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 6th edition from 1850 at position 198 (KHM 198) and comes from Karl Müllenhoff's collection of sagas, fairy tales and songs of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg from 1845.

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A prince and princess named Virgo Maleen are in love and want to get married. Her father, however, wants to give her to someone else, and because Maleen opposes his intention, the king has her and her maid walled up in a tower for seven years. When the food runs out after the deadline and no one lets it out, the two virgins free themselves from the tower and find the kingdom destroyed. They migrate and feed on nettles . At the court of her lover, the virgin Maleen finally finds an unrecognized job as a maid. The prince is about to marry an evil and ugly bride arranged by his father. She is so ashamed of her appearance that she forces the virgin Maleen to secretly put on the wedding dress in her place and to represent her at the wedding ceremony. On the wedding procession, Maleen speaks to a nettle, the pontoon and the church gate, suggesting that he is the wrong bride. When the prince asked, she replied that she had only thought of the virgin Maleen. He hangs a piece of jewelery on her as a present. When the veiled, ugly bride is led to him in the evening, he asks again for her enigmatic words. The ugly bride apologizes three times, claiming that her maid will bear her thoughts, and then forces the correct answers from Maleen. Finally, the prince asks about the jewelery that Maiden Maleen has kept for herself. The ugly bride then admits the exchange and wants to have the virgin Maleen beheaded , but the prince comes and recognizes her. They will be happy together, the ugly bride will be beheaded.

Stylistic peculiarities

The text, which is otherwise printed in High German, contains some formulas in dialect. Virgin Maleen says on the way to church:

Brennettelbusch, ( nettle bush ,)
Brennettelbusch so small ( nettle bush so small)
What are you all here? (What are you standing here alone?)
Ik hef de Tyt weten, (I knew the time (= I can remember the time),)
Since hef ik dy unshaved, (Since I have you unshed,)
Unbaked eten. (Eaten unbaked.)
Karkstegels, not brik, not right brood. (Church stairs, don't break, I'm not the right bride)
Karkendär, brik nich, right brood nich. (Church door, don't break, I'm not the real bride)

The false bride helps herself against the prince's questions with the sentence:

Courage heruet na myne Maegt, (must come out after my maid)
De my myn thoughts. (That carries my thoughts)

The text ends with a poem that children sing at the abandoned tower of the Virgin Maleen:

sound, sounded kloria,
who sat in this Toria?
Dar sitt en king's daughter in,
I can't see them krygn.
De Muer, de don't want to bräken,
De Steen, de doesn't want to sting.
Little boy with the colorful yak,
Trouble and follow my afta.

origin

According to Karl Müllenhoff's collection of sagas, fairy tales and songs from the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg (1845), Jungfer Maleen comes from Meldorf . The Brothers Grimm adopted it for their children's and house tales from the 6th edition (1850) as number 198 Jungfrau Maleen . They changed the wording, e.g. B. in the original the girls let themselves down from the tower (instead of jumping). The final poem is reported separately as presumably related to such a fairy tale, with the following variant from line 5:

Nah, mother, don't worry, don't worry:
Steen unn Been leaves my;
Kumt de olle colorful skirt
Unn starts my eighth.

Comparisons

Danaë in the tower (Jan Mabuse, 1527)

The lonely faithful virgin, who is compared here with the debris plant nettle, corresponds to many other fairy tales. The motif of the virgin in the tower corresponds to the Greek myth of Danaë and the Christian legend of Saint Barbara and also appears in KHM 12 Rapunzel , KHM 69 Jorinde and Joringel , KHM 76 The Carnation . At Virgin Maleen is probably to Mary Magdalene (KHM see. 76 thought the carnation ). The false bride, too, who has no thoughts of her own (KHM 13 , 21 , 65 , 89 , 135 , 186 ), is particularly inviting for depth psychological interpretations.

The fact that the prince wanders around his lover's prison tower is not in the Müllenhoff original. The Brothers Grimm added this, probably based on KHM 69 Jorinde and Joringel and KHM 181 The Mermaid in the Pond , as well as the name Cinderella for the kitchen help. Conversely, the fairy tale could already be influenced by earlier editions of children's and household tales . Similar fairy tales would be:

effect

In 1889, Maurice Maeterlinck wrote the stage work La Princesse Maleine in free modification of the fairy tale motifs , where a mystical tragedy of resignation dramatically unfolds in front of the foil of the fairy tale of the virgin Maleen. In the German translations by Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski by Stefan Gross, the piece by Maeterlinck is called Princess Maleine . Based on the piece by Maeterlinck, Lili Boulanger wrote an opera La Princesse Maleine , which, although it has remained a fragment, makes the fairy tale a source of inspiration for interesting musical and compositional innovations.

Börries von Münchhausen wrote a ballad from the nettle bush in 1910 , which is apparently based on the fairy tale. The fairy tale collector Sigrid Früh was personally influenced by the fairy tale she heard as a child in the air raid shelter. Holger Teschke produced a children's radio play in 2003. In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Festival in Hanau was Virgin Maleen 2005 in the program. The passage with the swapped bride going to church and the conversations about nettles, church stairs and church gate as well as the bride's final confession were used in the DEFA fairy tale film Rapunzel or the magic of tears .

Günter Eich wrote:

Brothers Grimm
Stinging nettle bush.
The burned children
wait behind the cellar windows.
The parents have left
said they were coming soon.
First came the wolf
who brought the rolls
the hyena borrowed the spade,
the scorpion the television program.
Without flames
the nettle bush burns outside.
Long
the parents stay away.

Film adaptations

literature

  • Müllenhoff, Karl: Legends, fairy tales and songs of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg. Kiel, 1845, pp. 391-395.
  • Grimm, Brothers: Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. 19th edition, Artemis & Winkler Verlag / Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf and Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-538-06943-3 , pp. 800–805.
  • 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, ISBN 3-15-003193-1 , pp. 274, 515.
  • 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, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2004, ISBN 3-88476-717-8 , pp. 524-537, 584. (= series of literature studies, vol. 35).
  • Maennersdoerfer, Maria Christa: Princess in the earth cave. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 10. Berlin, New York 2002, pp. 1336-1341.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Eich: Brothers Grimm. In: Die Horen. Vol. 1/52, No. 225, 2007, ISSN  0018-4942 , p. 7.

Web links

Wikisource: Jungfrau Maleen  - Sources and full texts