Child horror figure
A child scare character is a fictional character that is used to scare children .
Parents, grandparents, wet nurses and other children told children about such characters, especially in earlier centuries. The classic motif is "taking children with you", in which the children were threatened with the fact that the scary figure would come and "fetch" them if they were not good. There were also often threats with figures that “eat up” children.
This served to entertain the children with scary stories on the one hand, but also to intimidate them and make them obedient (e.g. to make them stay quiet in bed at night or stay away from dangerous places such as bodies of water ) on the other. . Child scare characters appear in legends , fairy tales and horror stories (see also old wives' tales ), but are also used outside of literature - for example in the form of a threat.
From the typical child fright figures, frightening figures are to be distinguished, which were invented less specifically to frighten children and in which people partly still believed in as adults. These include, for example, mythical creatures that attack hikers , goblins , trolls , witches , devils , ghosts and ghosts .
Children's folklore
The frightful figures also had their firm place in children's folklore (social transmission from children to children, not mainly through adults). Sometimes children joke with one another with such horror figures. They are still known to this day from children's games (e.g. Who's Afraid of Black Men? ), Poems , stories , fairy tales and children's songs (e.g. the song from Bi-ba-butzemann ). The fear of these characters is often playfully sublimated here.
Children's books
Many children's book authors of the 20th century have also taken up the characters and converted them into “dear” sympathetic characters in literary terms in order to make children less afraid of them. A popular means of doing this is to depict the feared figures themselves as children with fears and problems. The best-known works of this type are by Otfried Preußler , for example Das kleine Gespenst or Die kleine Hexe . Further examples of this children's book genre are Der kleine Vampir by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg and Alle mein Monster by Thomas Brezina .
The didactic reversal is pushed even further in the picture book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak : There, in a dream, the naughty Max manages to tame the frightful figures by staring into their eyes. The wild guys then crown Max their king and he sends her to bed without food. When Max leaves the wild guys alone, they try to scare him again, but he is not impressed and returns home, where the food is still waiting for him.
In many of the courage-making stories, the frightening characters themselves are beings in need of help. In a picture book by Tomi Ungerer, for example, the girl Zeralda cultivates the child-eating giant by preparing wonderful dishes that are so much tastier than human flesh , so that the giant soon changes his eating habits, and in the end both of them even marry. Sophiechens Giant von Roald Dahl turns out to be an outsider who prefers to eat puke pickles and bubbling water than to eat human flesh. Here Sophiechen is challenged to help the poor giant to assert himself against the other giants, who in turn are classic scare characters.
Well-known child scare characters
For naughty children
- Bogeyman
- Little has been handed down of the Buhmann (also Bullemann). However, it has become established as a transferred term in the German language and roughly synonymous with the " scapegoat " designates a person who - completely undeserved or to a disproportionate degree - is blamed by a majority opinion.
- Butzemann
- The Butzemann is a ghostly, goblin-like or dwarf-like figure, who is mainly known from southern Germany and Switzerland. Only recently has this figure appeared mainly as a child frightening figure.
- Busebeller
- The Busebeller is described as a tall, dark figure who, according to popular belief, is up to mischief in East Frisia .
- Knecht Ruprecht
- Knecht Ruprecht , also Rupperich or Krampus , is the sinister companion of Nikolaus , who threatens naughty children with a rod , or by putting them in his sack or box and taking them with him. A special feature of this child horror figure is that it appears not only in oral and written stories and pictures, but also in the form of adults in disguise every year in the relevant season.
- Popelmann
- Known in the Sudetenland , Popelmann and his companion Popelhole kidnap naughty children into their swamp.
Other "general" scare characters are the child taker , the child eater , the bad uncle and Franz Karl Ginzkeys Hatschi Bratschi .
For thumb suckers
- Tailor with scissors
- A child horror figure from literature (the picture book Struwwelpeter ) who cuts off the thumbs of the thumb sucking child.
For children who don't want to go to bed
- Night buck
- A child frightening figure in the shape of a billy goat that comes to children at night who are not calm or who are sleeping. Children who were out in the open at night were also threatened with the night buck.
- Night giger
- The night giger known in Franconia fetches children at night who are cheeky or who are still alone.
- Night crab
- The night crab , sometimes thought of as a huge, black raven, grabs children who are still outdoors after dark and flies with them so far that they will never find their home again.
- Sandman
- The Sandman was a child frightening figure who put sand in the eyes of children who didn't want to sleep. The literary climax of this character was to be read in ETA Hoffmann's Der Sandmann . Since the TV show Our Sandman , which is broadcast shortly before going to bed, children in German-speaking countries no longer associate the Sandman with something terrible.
More terror figures of the night is the Bummelux or Bullerlux in central Thuringia Nachtraben , in Swabia the Boggaraule and Hunsrück the Naachseil (owl).
Warning of dangerous places
- Bad Wolf
- In earlier centuries, wolves were a real danger that you had to be careful of in the woods and fields. Based on this, "the wolf" also developed into a popular child frightening figure. Classically, it served to scare children from going into the forest alone. The wolf can be found in many fairy tales (e.g. Little Red Riding Hood ).
- Hakemann
- The Hakemann is a hybrid of human and fish. He pulls non-swimming children into water with a hook so that they drown and are eaten by him. In Franconia it is known as Hägglmoo .
- Shock jack
- The shock jack occurs particularly in southern Germany. He secretly sneaks up on children who are too close to abysses and pushes them down. With the figure of the push boy, children are to be prevented from venturing too close to deep abysses.
- Aquarius
- The Wassermann , Nix, Nöck or Neck is a water spirit mostly described as evil inland . Children were threatened that the water sock would lure them with presents, then drag them into the water (mostly in ponds or pools) and hold their souls captive there.
Warning of plantings
Grain demons (a collective term introduced by Wilhelm Mannhardt ) should keep children away from cornfields :
- The rye wolf , a variant of the bad wolf
- The Roggenmuhme
- The grain man
Similar scare figures are the Schlurger and the Rebhansel , which children should keep away from vineyards .
Warning of strangers
- Foreign man
- The strange man often appears in poison green trousers and a black coat. He is a well-known child frightening figure in western Austria.
- Mummelratz
- In central Thuringia, children are warned about the Mummelratz, which will fetch them if they behave in a naughty manner or in dangerous places. He is mostly described as a black, hooded man. In and around Gotha there is still an eloquent threat ... sonsd hold dech dar Mummlratz! known.
- Black man
- (also "bad man") is known as a child horror figure throughout the German-speaking area. Depending on the region and time, it was understood to mean different beings: a dark, shadowy figure, a man with black clothes and a blackened face ( chimney sweep ) or a dark-skinned man. The black man is also from the children's game (catch) “ Who's afraid of the black man? " known.
Other countries
The bogeyman (also spelled boogeyman ) is known in the English-speaking cultural area , presumably an equivalent to the German Butzemann. The ogre is also known as a man-eating horror figure, especially in the English-speaking world. American children's folklore also knows a female horror figure: the bloodthirsty Bloody Mary , who is supposed to appear when you pronounce her name three times in front of a mirror. In France there is the monsieur du grenier , le croque-mitaine and le Bonhomme sept-heures , in Spain there is el Coco . The black man is called mumus in Hungary . In Russia, children are intimidated with babaj (also called babajka ). He is described as an old man who lurks in front of the house taking away naughty children in a sack.
See also
literature
- Richard Barber, Anne Riches: A dictionary of fabulous beasts . Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2001, ISBN 0-85115-685-1 (reprinted from London 1971 edition).
- Alexander Eliot: Myths van de mensheid . Kosmos, Amsterdam 1977, ISBN 90-215-0652-1 .
- Theo Schildkamp: The great book of the miraculous beings ("Wonderwezens"). Stalling Verlag, Oldenburg 1981, ISBN 3-7979-1704-X .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Note: There is also a beetle that apart from its name has nothing to do with this fictional frightening figure, the pale old oak night buck from the longhorn family .
- ↑ Goth idioms and proverbs on www.echt-gothsch.de