Artist Feature: Albert Weisgerber

Foundling Bird

Albert Weisgerber (1878-1915) was a German artist whose illustrations of Grimm's Fairy Tales are very dark, literally and figuratively. Not only did he choose darker tones on the color spectrum, but the tales he chose to illustrate and the scenes he chose from them tend to be some of the more violent and morbid. For contrast, he was a contemporary of Paul Friedrich Meyerheim, whose cheerful and pleasant illustrations of pretty blonde heroines and animals in Grimm tales I shared earlier this month.

Take a look at the "Hansel and Gretel" illustrations below. Here, the witch's house is not the colorful candy palace that is every child's dream-but a drab brown house surrounded by eerie trees. Then he is one of the few illustrators (like Willy Planck) who chose to actually show the most violent scene, in which Gretel pushes the witch into the oven -while most images of this fairy tale will show the candy house, the children lost in the woods, or even Hansel in captivity, most artists shy away from actually showing the witch entering the hot oven.

Hansel and Gretel

More Grimm tales he illustrated:

Seven Ravens

The Death of the Little Hen

The Devil and his Grandmother

The Devil's Sooty Brother

The Seven Swabians

The Youth who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was

The pictures become even more chilling when you know a little of Weisgerber's history: he died in World War I while serving in the same regiment as Adolf Hitler.

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Artist Feature: Paul Friedrich Meyerheim

I was unfamiliar with German artist Paul Friedrich Meyerheim until recently. He isn't primarily known for fairy tale illustrations (unlike beloved illustrators such as Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, and others well-known in the fairy tale community), but he illustrated an 1893 edition of the Grimms' Kinder und Hausmarchen.

He really loved depicting animals in his work, so the illustrations here feature animal tales pretty heavily. Posts like this provide a fun opportunity for "Name that fairy tale," especially with some of the lesser known animal tales. How many can you name? Answers at the bottom...(all from Grimms)

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Answers:

1. Frog King (Frog Prince) 2. Little Brother and Little Sister 3. Goose Girl 4. Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) 5. Hansel and Gretel 6. Little Red Riding Hood 7. Cinderella 8.Snow White  9. Bremen Town Musicians 10. Wolf and Seven Kids 11.  The Clever Little Tailor (Not to be confused with the Valiant Little Tailor...) 12. The Death of the Little Hen

Philip Pullman Grimm Tales for the Young and Old: An Immersive Fairy Tale

Any readers who live in England/will be travelling to the UK this spring? There's a unique fairy tale play going on, Philip Pullman's Grimm Tales for the Young and Old: An Immersive Fairy Tale, adapted and directed by Philip Wilson.

The official description:

"This winter, Philip Pullman’s compelling Grimm Tales return in a brand new immersive storytelling experience that will plunge adults and children alike into the subversive world of the Brothers Grimm.

"An enticingly foreboding shadow is descending over the sprawling Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf on London’s South Bank. Here, these delightfully twisted tales, lovingly crafted and theatrically reimagined, will be brought to life before your very eyes.

"Do you dare experience these infamous fairy tales, no longer bound to their pages but trailing your footsteps, breathing softly down your neck and unravelling in wonder before your eyes? From The Frog King to Hansel & Gretel, you’ll encounter some unforgettable characters from Philip Pullman’s book, in a deliciously dark winter experience full of unexpected twists and turns."

And in Philip Pullman's own words:
"When I saw this team’s previous production at Shoreditch Town Hall, I was thrilled with the vividness and fidelity with which they’d carried the tales from the page to the performance space. Imagination, wit, a mastery of all the theatrical possibilities of lighting and costume and make-up and the simple magic of transformation all combined in an experience that was a joy to encounter. I’m sure the venerable Brothers Grimm themselves, if they could see it, would be as delighted as I was."

Reviewers seem overall very impressed with the play, especially the format. Instead of an audience sitting in chairs in an auditorium, they follow the characters through a large warehouse with different sections set up as each fairy tale. Props to the creators of this play for not only staying faithful to the Grimm fairy tales, but introducing audiences to lesser known tales, such as "Faithful Johannes" and "The Three Little Men in the Woods" (which seems to be the audience favorite).

For more reviews, you can read Gaby Woods' at the Telegraph or on The Awkward Blog, the source of all the pictures here

From the Forest

By chance, I happened to come across two completely different websites that described the Japanese tradition of Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing (more on that below), on the same week I received the book From the Forest: A Search for the Hidden Roots of our Fairy Tales, by Sara Maitland. A sign perhaps?...unfortunately, my favorite forest preserves have all been recently buried under more than a foot of snow so it'll be a while before I can actually benefit from them.

Forests play a huge part in fairy tales, symbolically and historically. The tales are set in the past, before industrialization, when man struggled to tame and subdue the wild in order to survive. Understanding more of the cultures of long ago will help shed light on how we view and interpret fairy tales.

The book is arranged in twelve sections, one for every month of the year. In each one, Maitland travels through a different forest, and records her reflections and thoughts as they pertain to fairy tales. In this aspect the book was a bit different than I expected-from the subtitle, "A Search for the Hidden Roots of our Fairy Tales," I was expecting a more historical, research based approach to early fairy tales, something like the writings of Graham Anderson or Ruth Bottigheimer, but somehow linked to forest imagery and facts. It's more like personal reflections, but Maitland does have some interesting insights into the tales of the brothers Grimm, and each section concludes with a fairy tale-inspired short story.

Knockman Wood, one of the forests visited by Maitland

My goal is to read it throughout the year; each month read the corresponding section. Already I've read January and February (which are, interestingly, the last two chapters). I'll be sharing some of the thoughts I have as I read through, but of course leaving enough to inspire you to buy the book yourself! To be honest I wasn't impressed with the Sleeping Beauty story, but really liked the Twelve Dancing Princesses story, which had a refreshingly dark approach. (Not that other fairy tales haven't been given dark treatments, but it seems like Twelve Dancing Princesses-inspired fiction tends to be more traditional, and Maitland helped me think differently about some aspects of the story...)

Aside from helping us to reflect on fairy tales and their settings, forests actually have scientifically proven to be beneficial:

"Shinrin-yoku is a Japanese term that means "forest bathing" ...The idea being that spending time in the forest and natural areas is good preventative medicine, since it lowers stress, which causes or exacerbates some of our most intractable health issues. As MNN's Catie Leary details, this isn't just a nice idea — there's science behind it: "The "magic" behind forest bathing boils down to the naturally produced allelochemic substances known as phytoncides, which are kind of like pheromones for plants. Their job is to help ward off pesky insects and slow the growth of fungi and bacteria. When humans are exposed to phytoncides, these chemicals are scientifically proven to lower blood pressure, relieve stress and boost the growth of cancer-fighting white blood cells. Some common examples of plants that give off phytoncides include garlic, onion, pine, tea tree and oak, which makes sense considering their potent aromas." "

Starre Vartan

Killian Schonberger, Brothers Grimm's Homeland

"Studies have confirmed that spending time within a forest setting can reduce psychological stress, depressive symptoms, and hostility, while at the same time improving sleep, and increasing both vigor and a feeling of liveliness," write Eva Selhub and Alan Logan in their book Your Brain on Nature (Collins; 2013). "Japanese researchers found that 20 minutes of shinrin-yoku—compared with 20 minutes in an urban setting—altered cerebral blood flow in a manner that indicated a state of relaxation."

Stephanie Vozza

Killian Schonberger-Brothers Grimm Photography

For some gorgeous photography inspired by fairy tales, be sure to check out Borthers Grimm's Wanderings, a series by Killian Schonberger!

Artist's description:
"Brothers Grimm's Wanderings is the second part of a photo project that started with Brothers Grimm's Homeland. The photos are inspired by the old fairytales written by the Brothers Grimm. Therefore I'm searching places throughout Central Europe that echo the mood of those old stories. I think there is a deep longing for tranquil naturalness among people in our techonology-driven environment. Therefore I don't want to show just potrayals of natural scenes - I want to create visually accessible places where the visitor can virtually put his mind at rest and make up his own stories. Possibly this is the real benefit of my work: Resting places for the eyes in an visually overstimulated world."

I think it's true that the more technologically driven our world becomes, the more we long for and romanticize nature, which partly explains why fairy tales are particularly trendy right now. I like how Schonberger interprets fairy tales as needing to be accessible as well as magical; they appeal to us on a personal level.

And here is his first series, Brothers Grimm Homeland. All of these were also taken in central Europe.

And with the same type of feel and inspiration, fans of this will also be interested in his Dark Forest series. Description: 

"Back into the light.  Where Hansel and Gretel lost their way.

Wanderings through the remote forests along the former Iron Curtain in Central Europe."

I love these. Forests are very important, symbolically, in fairy tales. They are where the heroes and heroines go off on their own, entering into adventure and danger; they can represent our subconscious and entering into a new phase of independence. While these photos portray the forest as ominous, the light breaking through is a ray of hope, reminding us that there is an end and a way out of our own dark forests.

The Singing Bone: Nature as Truth Teller

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The Singing Bone is a lovely little Grimm fairy tale-I especially like it as a flute player. In the story, two brothers go to find and kill a wild boar that has been terrorizing the kingdom. The younger is rewarded for his kind heart when a fairy appears and gives him a spear. He finds the boar and kills it.

But later, his brother sees him carrying the boar home, and decides to kill his brother, take the boar for himself, and tell the King it was he who courageously killed the boar. He does so, and gains the Princess, which was the reward. But a few years later, a herdsmen found one of the bones of the murdered brother and made a flute out of it. Only the flute, when played, sang the words that told of the victim's story:

"Ah! dear shepherd, you are blowing your horn
With one of my bones, which night and morn
Lie still unburied, beneath the wave
Where I was thrown in a sandy grave.
I killed the wild boar, and my brother slew me,
And gained the Princess by pretending 'twas he."

Bone Flutes

This is one of those bittwersweet fairy tales. Justice is done, as the murdered brother's bones are recovered and given a proper burial, and the older brother is punished with death. But in this tale, the innocent dead man does not come back to life and gain the Princess.

Hello Kitty's "The Singing Bone" from McDonalds

 Often in fairy tales, the characters are prevented from telling the truth, and Nature sometimes interferes by revealing the evil deeds that the villains almost get away with. In "Juniper Tree" and "Cinderella", birds tell the truth (the spirit of the murdered boy, in the form of a bird, proclaims "my mother she slew me/my father he ate me" as he rewards the good and punishes the mother; the birds in Grimms' "Aschenputtel" tell the Prince of the blood on the shoes of the false brides).

Artist??-Source

 In "Snow White", it is the Mirror (or, sometimes the Sun or Moon) that fearlessly tells the Queen who is really the fairest in the land. In some stories, such as "Goose Girl", the main character may be bound by a promise not to tell the truth of what happened to them; but by telling their story to an inanimate object, so as not to break their word.

"The Goose Girl," Arthur Rackham

And here, the bones of the victim beg for justice-which is often what symbolically happens in murder mysteries, but here what literally happens. For as the tale says, "these dark deeds are not often concealed, for something happens to bring them to light."

Alan Dundes on the Dangers of Ignoring Oral Folklore

Alan Dundes is the author of two fairy tale Casebooks, one for Cinderella and one for LRRH. The Cinderella one was at my hometown library, and one of the first fairy tale books I read-it was eye-opening to be able to read multiple essays and articles on Cinderella, representing all of the major ways of interpreting the folk tale.

In his essay "Studying the Fairy Tale," Dundes warns about the tendency to only study fairy tales from the brothers Grimm and Perrault. True folktales are orally circulated, therefore any written tales are "only a pale and inadequate reflection of what was originally an oral performance...from this folkloristic perspective, one cannot possibly read fairy tales; one can only hear them."

Sure, there are differences between fairy tales being told and being written and read, but written tales allow us to preserve and spread them much easier. However, when it comes to the traditional fairy tale collections, we have tales that were manipulated and changed, multiple variations spliced together, or chunks added or removed just to please the audience. The issue is that many scholars tend to only analyze these most popular versions of fairy tales, ignoring the folk variants that exist. Thus people too often come to the wrong conclusions when focusing on details that aren't essential to the tale type itself-such as pumpkins and glass slippers in Cinderella, or analyzing the significance of the color red in Riding Hood's cloak.

Herbert Cole

To really understand a tale, its history, how it is shaped by culture and how it shapes culture, you really have to look at multiple versions. However, a major issue is availability. Dundes suggests that you "simply apply" to one of the archives that contain vast collections of unpublished folktales; the majority of tales collected by folklorists over the last centuries remain unpublished (at least in 1986, when he wrote this essay). However, that doesn't really seem feasible unless you're a very serious folklore student, not a blogger doing this as a hobby, or someone mildly interested in learning more about fairy tales.

Fortunately for us, there's the Surlalune book series which collects variants from around the world, as well as the Schonwerth collection. There are, of course, other books of collected folk tales, but if you go to any library or bookstore, you'll find the majority of writings on the Grimms, a little on Andersen and Perrault, virtually nothing on the French salon writers or earlier Italian writers, and very few collections of lesser known tales. To the right you can follow my tags for African, Native American, European, or Asian folklore, but there are relatively few of those compared to information about the Grimms or standard tales. Again, I can only read what's available on the internet, libraries, or reasonably priced books on Amazon-and I do try to keep in mind what readers might find most interesting. Psychologically, people will be more motivated to learn, and more likely to remember, something they already have a mental framework for; that's partly why artists and authors return again and again to the same, standard set of fairy tales.

Plus, it's helpful to have a common frame of reference. You could pull two stories which are technically Cinderella variants but have little in common; it would be very hard to have discussions without forming some sort of "standard" versions that are well known, as long as we avoid calling the Grimms' stories "the originals." 

Edmund Dulac

Clearly, there's danger in remaining ignorant about fairy tales and their sources, but Dundes uses some pretty strong, opinionated language to describe people who only use standard literary collections as their source-they are "deluded individuals who erroneously believe they are studying fairy tales when they limit themselves to the Grimm or Perrault versions of tales." 

The fact is, one of the great things about fairy tales is that they belong to the People. The tales told by peasants around a fire or over household chores are the true folklore. Yet, although the Grimms obviously changed their tales, Dundes also acknowledges that folk tales come in hundreds of variations; no two tellers would give word-for-word the same version of a story. So, among oral tellers and literary writers, change is an integral part of these stories. Just as the Grimms altered their versions to suit their audience, the people who told the stories to them had also changed the stories according to what they remembered, their own personal preferences, and their audience. In fact, those tales that he lauds as true folklore (that were told to the Grimms) were very influenced by the literary tales of Perrault, which had become well known and spread around Europe by the time the Grimms collected their stories, and many of the tales are likely descended from those literary tales. 

Going further back, the tales of Perrault had been told and retold but many of them originated in the literary sources of the Italian writers, Straparola and Basile. (Read more on these Italian writers' influence on fairy tales from Ruth Bottigheimer's theory about the origin of fairy tales). Those stories were influenced by other literary works, and some motifs can be traced back to mythology, which we only know because many myths were written down. It gets very sticky to say that no written tales are true fairy tales, and that oral tales are "better" or "more authentic." There is no clear source, but we know fairy tales have a pattern of being shaped by writers, then the public, then back to writers, in a continuing cycle.

Still, it's important to remember that there is a whole world of fairy tales beyond the Grimms and Perrault (and Disney for that matter), and the variants that were told orally can be surprising to those who only know the most famous fairy tale versions.