Laura Gonzenbach

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Laura Gonzenbach (married: Laura La Racine ; born December 26, 1842 in Messina , Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ; † July 16, 1878 , in Messina, Kingdom of Italy ) was a Swiss woman who lived in Sicily . She went down in history as the author of a collection of Sicilian fairy tales written in German.

Title page of the collection of Sicilian fairy tales

Life

Messina 1882

Laura Gonzenbach was a daughter of Peter Victor Gonzenbach (1808–1885), a trading agent and Swiss consul in Messina from St. Gallen . Since her parents belonged to the German-speaking Protestant community in Messina, she grew up there. Like her sister Magdalena, she received a thorough education. She was also sent to Germany, if only for a short time. In addition to German and Sicilian - both mother tongues - she also spoke French and Italian.

The origin of her collection of Sicilian fairy tales is related to her acquaintance with the historian and theologian Otto Hartwig , who came to Messina in 1860 at the invitation of Consul Gonzenbach and looked after the German community for five years as a Reformed preacher and teacher. When he returned to Germany at the work From Sicilien. Cultur- und Geschistorbilder (2 volumes, 1867–1869) worked, he decided to add some Sicilian fairy tales as an appendix. He was interested in authentic, unadorned folk tales. Since there were no suitable printed fairy tales, he asked Laura Gonzenbach, whom he knew from his stay in Messina as an “excellent storyteller”, to send him some fairy tales. She gladly fulfilled this request and initially sent him 10 fairy tales.

Soon after the collection of Sicilian Fairy Tales was completed , Laura Gonzenbach married the Italian colonel from Savoy named François Laurent La Racine (1818–1906) in 1869 . Little is known about her life as a wife. She died too early at the age of only 35.

Sicilian fairy tales

Etna

Hartwig's suggestion fell on fertile ground with Laura Gonzenbach. She wrote to him, along with the first fairy tales, that "after the first difficulties in finding good Sicilian fairy tellers had been overcome", she had got to know a great many fairy tales that she wanted to make available to him. Laura Gonzenbach wrote most of the fairy tales during a stay in the country house on the south-eastern slopes of Mount Etna off Acireale and Catania in the early summer of 1868. In this area she also found many new fairy tales. In 1868 she sent Hartwig a large collection that consisted of 92 fairy tales. She wrote to him at the same time that she was ready to continue collecting. She is convinced that she could easily put together a second hundred because the fairy tales are still very widespread among the people. It is not known why she did not continue her collection anyway

Storyteller Caterina Certo, frontispiece by Adolf Neumann

Otto Hartwig decided to publish this collection in full and got in touch with the fairy tale connoisseur Reinhold Köhler , who called the collection a “real enrichment of our fairy tale literature”. During the publication, Hartwig worked closely with Laura Gonzenbach on the one hand and with Köhler on the other, who was willing to work out comments. Gonzenbach's text was subjected to only a few very small stylistic changes by Hartwig and also by Köhler. Hartwig himself wrote an extensive introduction and a foreword to it. The order of the fairy tales also comes from Köhler. Hartwig also added two fairy tales in the Messinian dialect, written down by Salvatore Morganti from Messina. The collection also contains two frontispieces with copper engraved portraits of two narrators made by Adolf Neumann from photographs. Hartwig's efforts go back to the wave of Italian-German competition in the publication of Italian folk songs, fairy tales and novellas from the 1860s. Laura Gonzenbach also knew about this competition and wanted to do well in it. Her collection is the first printed collection of Sicilian fairy tales. The next four-volume collection by Giuseppe Pitrè Fiabe, novelle e raconti popolari Siciliani, was not published until 1875 . Gonzenbach's collection is also one of the few fairy tale collections from the 19th century that was composed by a woman.

Messina water front after the 1908 earthquake

Almost all of Gonzenbach's fairy tales are based on stories told by women. Alessandro Grasso from Blandano was their only narrator; but he too had learned fairy tales from his mother. Most of Gonzenbach's storytellers were peasant women from eastern Sicily, from the Messina region. She said their names, it was u. a. the peasant women Bastiana from Viagrande near Acireale , Nunzia Giuffridi, Lucia, Sicca (Francesca) Crialese from Borgo near Catania , as well as Antonia Centorrino, Elisabetta Martinotti, Concetta Martinotti, Francesca Rusullo from Messina, Peppina Guglielmo from near Messina, Caterina Certo from San Pietro di Monforte . But little is known about the narrators themselves, the circumstances and methods of collecting, and the natural framework of fairy telling. Gonzenbach's original manuscripts are no longer preserved. They were probably destroyed in the 1908 earthquake in Messina . For this reason one cannot compare the original wording of the fairy tales with their translation. In a letter to Hartwig, which he partially quoted in the introduction, Laura Gonzenbach assured, "I have done my best to reproduce the fairy tales as they were told to me". Hartwig again praised her for the excellent feeling with which she reproduced spoken Sicilian in German. He also emphasized that she "reproduced the original phrases, the sometimes cumbersome transitions, the jealous retrospective of the hero's happiness [...] perfectly the phrases of the Sicilians".

Laura Gonzenbach was a talented narrator, but she had no ethnographic training. Nevertheless, because of its original freshness and various details from everyday life, your collection withstands a quality comparison with the Sicilian fairy tales by Pitrè (1875) or Grisanti (1981). Although Antti Aarne took them into account in his catalog of fairy tales from 1912, their collection was received cautiously by scientists in Germany; outside of Germany it was practically ignored and forgotten there. The granddaughter of the author, Renata La Racine, made the first attempt to make fairy tales known in Italy in 1964 when she presented her translation of 38 fairy tales. Only the complete translations of the collection into Italian by Luisa Rubini (1999) and into English by Jack David Zipes (2006) finally ended this long period of oblivion. Gonzenbach's merits are based u. a. that she saved a whole series of fairy tales from oblivion - they are only known thanks to their writing.

expenditure

Complete editions

  • Sicilian fairy tales. Collected from the vernacular , with comments by Reinhold Köhler and an introduction ed. by Otto Hartwig, 2 parts, Leipzig: Engelmann 1870
  • Fiabe Siciliane , translated by Luisa Rubini, 1999
  • Beautiful angiola. The lost Sicilian folk and fairy tales of Laura Gonzenbach , translated and with an introduction by Jack Zipes , New York, London: Routledge, 2006, ISBN 978-0-415-97722-7

Extracts

  • Tradizione popolare nelle fiabe siciliane di Laura von Gonzenbach. Scelta , traduizione e introduzione di Renata LaRacine. Presentazione di Paolo Toschi, Messina, Firenze: d'Anna 1964 [38 fairy tales]
  • Sicilian fairy tales collected from the vernacular , Nördlingen: Greno 1989, ISBN 3-89190-250-6 ( The other library )
  • Beautiful angiola. The Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales Collected by Laura Gonzenbach , translated by Jack Zipes, New York, London: Routledge 2004

Edits

  • The beautiful Anna. In the wonderland of Sicily , photographed by Hans Siwik, recorded according to the vernacular and translated by Laura Gonzenbach, Freiburg 1993, ISBN 3-451-23179-4
  • Don Giovanni and the devil. Fairy tales from Sicily based on the vernacular , collected by Laura Gonzenbach, selected by Laurenz Bolliger, illustrated by Franziska Neubert, Berlin: Wagenbach 2003, ISBN 3-8031-1215-X
  • Of cunning cobblers, clever farmers, greedy kings, wicked witches and beautiful women - Sicilian fairy tales [by] Laura Gonzenbach , revised by Kathleen Gent, Leipzig: Edition Hamouda 2015, ISBN 978-3-940075-93-2

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Rudolf Schenda: Laura Gonzenbach and the Sicilian fairy tales ... , pp. 205–216
  2. ↑ Magdalena Gonzenbach founded a girls' school in Messina.
  3. ↑ a b c d Linda J. Lee. Gonzenbach, Laura
  4. ↑ Hartwig knew in the manuscript a translation of some Sicilian fairy tales that his friend Saverio Cavalleri had written down. He also had to refuse this, as it had been revised and in some places embellished in a novelistic manner.
  5. ↑ Otto Hartwig: Foreword , pp. VI – VII
  6. ↑ Otto Hartwig: From the life of a German librarian, Marburg 1906
  7. ↑ a b Otto Hartwig: Foreword , p. VII
  8. ↑ Otto Hartwig: Foreword , p. VIII.
  9. ↑ This is proven by 20 letters from Hartwig in Köhler's estate at the National Research and Memorial Centers for Classical German Literature in Weimar .
  10. ↑ The foreword was published in Italian in 1870 in “Rivista Sicilia” 2,3, 1870, pp. 596–601
  11. ↑ Köhler continued to work on the notes even after the collection was published. They appeared after his death: To the Sicilian fairy tales collected by Laura Gonzenbach. Supplements from R. Koehler's estate , ed. by Johannes Bolte. In: “Zeitschrift für Volkskunde” 6, 1896, pp. 58–78 and 161–175
  12. ↑ Otto Hartwig: Foreword , pp. X – XI
  13. ↑ a b Rudolf Schenda: Gonzenbach, Laura
  14. ↑ Otto Hartwig: Foreword , pp. VIII – IX
  15. ↑ Cristoforo Grisanti: Folklore di Isnello , ed.R. Schenda, Palermo: Sellerio 1981
  16. ^ Anti Aarne: Overview of the fairy tales that match the list of fairy tale types in the collections , Helsinki 1912

literature

  • Linda J. Lee. Gonzenbach, Laura . In: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales: GP , 2008, p. 417
  • Jack David Zipes: Laura Gonzenbach's Buried Treasure . In: Beautiful Angiola. The lost Sicilian folk and fairy tales of Laura Gonzenbach , translated and with an introduction by Jack Zipes, New York, London: Routledge 2006, ISBN 978-0-415-97722-7 , pp. XI – XXVII
  • Jack David Zipes: "Laura Gonzenbach and Her Forgotten Treasure of Sicilian Fairy Tales" . In: “Marvels & Tales” 17, 2003, pp. 239–242, ISSN  1536-1802
  • Luisa Rubini: Fiabe e mercanti in Sicilia. La raccolte di Laura Gonzenbach. La comunità di lingua tedesca a Messina nell'Ottocento , Firenze: Olschki 1998, ISBN 88-222-4666-7
  • Rudolf Schenda : Gonzenbach, Laura . In encyclopedia of fairy tales. Concise dictionary for historical and comparative narrative research, Vol. 4, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1987
  • Rudolf Schenda, S. Schenda: La donna e il concetto di lavoro nei raconti popolari siciliani della Gonzenbach e del Pitrè . In: La cultura materiale in Sicilia (Quaderni del Circolo Semiologico Siciliano 12-13), Palermo 1980, pp. 457-464
  • Rudolf Schenda: Laura Gonzenbach and the Sicilian Fairy Tales: Comments on the German-Italian folk literature relationships in the Risorgimento . In: " Fabula ", 20, Berlin: de Gruyter 1979, pp. 205-216
  • Otto Hartwig : Foreword to the first edition 1870, pp. V – XII

Web links

Wikisource: Laura Gonzenbach  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Gonzenbach, Laura
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gonzenbach, Laura von; La Racine, Laura; LaRacine, Laura
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss fairy tale collector
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Messina
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 1878
Place of death Messina