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January Meme: German Folklore
Jan. 24th, 2018 10:14 amOld joke from my university days: German folklore owes most of its existence to the Romantic Age. (And the ones immediately before and after, but English-speaking folk lump all those writers and professors together under the label "Romantic", so for the purposes of this entry, let's stick with that, otherwise the post will be over by the time I've explained about Sturm und Drang, Klassik, Vormärz und Biedermeier in addition to Romantik.) This is because in the last few decades of the 18th century, when our literature started to explode on the European scene, so to speak, one of the ways German-speaking writers got over the the long time inferiority complex which could be titled "The French Are Better At Everything" was to discover folk songs as "natural poetry". (Another was chucking out Corneille and Racine out of the window as literary models in favour of Shakespeare, but let's not get distracted.) Not only was it suddenly en vogue to collect Lieder, but to write them (and make them sound as if they were folk songs). This was also part of an attempt to establish a national identity, because there wasn't one in geographical terms. There was no Germany, there were a lot of German principalities. There was also first the French Revolution, and then Napoleon, who came, saw, and put the nominally still existing Holy Roman Empire out of its misery, reordering the various German states and establishing the Code Napoleon as law while he was at it. (This last one, btw, was not a bad thing, because it was a far more modern and equal civil code than anything our various principalities had to offer at that point.) So all that sudden interest in folk songs as a form of artistic expression, in medieval epics such as the Nibelungenlied and medieval poetry per se, and then, a generation later, also in folklore, with the Brothers Grimm the foremost (though neither the first nor the last) champions of collecting and publishing same came with a heavy dose of national identity searching (including wondering whether there was such a thing, and whether shared folklore and songs could contribute to define it).
However, as opposed to modern day anthropologists, all those German writers didn't exactly "collect", as in, hunt down songs and stories and transcribe them. It would be more accurately to say that a great many of them tried their hands and, well, writing their own. This is what happened with a famous three volume supposed collection of folk songs and folklore by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Armin, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which was hugely influential, but even critics at the time could tell most of the stories and songs weren't centuries old but had sprung from the imagination of the two authors and were how they imagined folk songs and folk lore should sound like. Now, Brentano and Armin were a poet and a writer respectively. The Brothers Grimm, on the other hand, were scholars. They had gotten a taste of folklore collecting when Brentano & Arnim asked them to help out with the third volume of Des Knaben Wunderhorn. But as it turned out, Brentano especially was so productive with his own stuff that what the Grimms had collected wasn't needed. They'd caught the bug, though, and decided to publish their own collection. That one, thought they, would follow the scholarly ideal of tracing down folklore in various villages across the countryside and transcribing it,thus securing German oral tradition for posterity.
Fat chance. For starters, these were two librarians (and future university professors) we're talking about. They hardly knew any "simple villagers". And while Wilhelm was more socially inclined than the sharp-tongued Jacob, they had, in pratical terms, not much of an idea of how to communicate with the idealized German peasant they'd imagined. (There were some very awkward and fruitless encounters indeed.) Which meant that most of the fairy tales that ended up in the famous collection didn't hail from old, wise villagers in Hesse or other German principalities, they came from mostly young women out of the Grimms' social circle (meaning they were well-read middle class and in two cases even nobility), several of whom came from French emigré families (Protestants who had fled France when Louis XIV had revoked the edict of Nantes, several generations earlier). The sources closest to the "wise old peasant" ideal were a) a middle aged female pub owner, Dorothea Viehmann, who accordingly was the only fairy tale source named by the Grimms in the foreword to the first edition, and b) two old soldiers. (If you're wondering why several of the fairy tales feature soldiers coming home from the wars and out of a job...) But, like I said: the majority of fairy tales were contributed by well-read young women who were, of course, very much influenced by their education. And then Wilhelm Grimm took editing up to a new level so those fairy tales at least sounded like they had a shared tone. It's Wiilhelm who invented that tone, who came up with "Es war einmal..."/"Once upon a time" at the beginning and "und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie noch heute" at the end (wich doesn't mean "and they lived happily ever after, btw; the German ending, literally translated, means "and if they didn't die, they're still alive today". If you compare, say, the fairy tale "The Princess and the Frog" (or, as it is known in German, "The Frog King") in the first edition to the second and then to the last edition published during Wilhelm's life time, the single opening paragraph evolves into one and a half pages in the last version (which is the one most often reprinted today), and incidentally, it's a showcase for Wilhelm's poetic gifts and some of his best choices of phrase. "In einer Zeit, in der das Wünschen noch geholfen hat...'" "At a time when wishing still helped..." Not a centuries old oral tradition, though. Pure 19th century Wilhelm Grimm.
However, all those songs and fairy tales then most definitely became folklore. To the point where I'm willing to bet not many people when first hearing or singing it are aware that Sah ein Knab ein Röslein stehn was written by the young Goethe. And there is the probably most famous and infamous example of all: Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten aka the Loreley song, originally written as an untitled poem by Heinrich Heine for his second poetry collection, Das Buch der Lieder. A composer named Friedrich Silcher then came up with an earworm of a melody for it, and it got enthusiastically sung as a folk song by Germans thereafter to this very day. Chances are that if you've ever heard a German folk song, it will be this one. (Well, okay, this one and "Muß I denn", but the later is Elvis' fault.)
The reason why I said its progression from poem by the sublimely ironic Heinrich Heine to folk song of folk songs is both famous and infamous is this: come 1933, the Nazis set out to eliminate, as you all know, artists from German cultural canon who were Jewish. Heine was. What's more, he also was famous for his biting satire about the German politics and habits of his day, and ended up in French (!) exile. (Being best buddies with Karl Marx. Though he also hung out with the Rothschilds, Parisian branch. Only Heine.) Otoh there was no way you could eliminate the Loreley song from the collective consciousness at that point. So what Goebbels & Co. did was to decree that the song would only be reprinted with the signature "old folk song, writer unknown"). If you think this was immediately revised after 1945, think again. It took a shameful time till "Text: Heinrich Heine" was restored in all reprints. (YouTube still calls it "old folk song", btw, though Heine's name duly given. )
If you're wondering: was Heine using, in his original poem, which is about a fisherman entranced by a mermaid and thus crashing on the Loreley cliff in the river Rhine, a popular fairy tale of his own day? Wellllll. Not really. The first guy who came up with the idea of using the name of the Loreley cliff as the name of a nymph whose beauty lures any man seeing it to his doom was, wait for it, Clemens Brentano (remember him?). Heine read Brentano's version and thereafter created his own.
In conclusion: German folklore: we have it! Straight from the late 18th and 19th century.
The Other Days
However, as opposed to modern day anthropologists, all those German writers didn't exactly "collect", as in, hunt down songs and stories and transcribe them. It would be more accurately to say that a great many of them tried their hands and, well, writing their own. This is what happened with a famous three volume supposed collection of folk songs and folklore by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Armin, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which was hugely influential, but even critics at the time could tell most of the stories and songs weren't centuries old but had sprung from the imagination of the two authors and were how they imagined folk songs and folk lore should sound like. Now, Brentano and Armin were a poet and a writer respectively. The Brothers Grimm, on the other hand, were scholars. They had gotten a taste of folklore collecting when Brentano & Arnim asked them to help out with the third volume of Des Knaben Wunderhorn. But as it turned out, Brentano especially was so productive with his own stuff that what the Grimms had collected wasn't needed. They'd caught the bug, though, and decided to publish their own collection. That one, thought they, would follow the scholarly ideal of tracing down folklore in various villages across the countryside and transcribing it,thus securing German oral tradition for posterity.
Fat chance. For starters, these were two librarians (and future university professors) we're talking about. They hardly knew any "simple villagers". And while Wilhelm was more socially inclined than the sharp-tongued Jacob, they had, in pratical terms, not much of an idea of how to communicate with the idealized German peasant they'd imagined. (There were some very awkward and fruitless encounters indeed.) Which meant that most of the fairy tales that ended up in the famous collection didn't hail from old, wise villagers in Hesse or other German principalities, they came from mostly young women out of the Grimms' social circle (meaning they were well-read middle class and in two cases even nobility), several of whom came from French emigré families (Protestants who had fled France when Louis XIV had revoked the edict of Nantes, several generations earlier). The sources closest to the "wise old peasant" ideal were a) a middle aged female pub owner, Dorothea Viehmann, who accordingly was the only fairy tale source named by the Grimms in the foreword to the first edition, and b) two old soldiers. (If you're wondering why several of the fairy tales feature soldiers coming home from the wars and out of a job...) But, like I said: the majority of fairy tales were contributed by well-read young women who were, of course, very much influenced by their education. And then Wilhelm Grimm took editing up to a new level so those fairy tales at least sounded like they had a shared tone. It's Wiilhelm who invented that tone, who came up with "Es war einmal..."/"Once upon a time" at the beginning and "und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie noch heute" at the end (wich doesn't mean "and they lived happily ever after, btw; the German ending, literally translated, means "and if they didn't die, they're still alive today". If you compare, say, the fairy tale "The Princess and the Frog" (or, as it is known in German, "The Frog King") in the first edition to the second and then to the last edition published during Wilhelm's life time, the single opening paragraph evolves into one and a half pages in the last version (which is the one most often reprinted today), and incidentally, it's a showcase for Wilhelm's poetic gifts and some of his best choices of phrase. "In einer Zeit, in der das Wünschen noch geholfen hat...'" "At a time when wishing still helped..." Not a centuries old oral tradition, though. Pure 19th century Wilhelm Grimm.
However, all those songs and fairy tales then most definitely became folklore. To the point where I'm willing to bet not many people when first hearing or singing it are aware that Sah ein Knab ein Röslein stehn was written by the young Goethe. And there is the probably most famous and infamous example of all: Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten aka the Loreley song, originally written as an untitled poem by Heinrich Heine for his second poetry collection, Das Buch der Lieder. A composer named Friedrich Silcher then came up with an earworm of a melody for it, and it got enthusiastically sung as a folk song by Germans thereafter to this very day. Chances are that if you've ever heard a German folk song, it will be this one. (Well, okay, this one and "Muß I denn", but the later is Elvis' fault.)
The reason why I said its progression from poem by the sublimely ironic Heinrich Heine to folk song of folk songs is both famous and infamous is this: come 1933, the Nazis set out to eliminate, as you all know, artists from German cultural canon who were Jewish. Heine was. What's more, he also was famous for his biting satire about the German politics and habits of his day, and ended up in French (!) exile. (Being best buddies with Karl Marx. Though he also hung out with the Rothschilds, Parisian branch. Only Heine.) Otoh there was no way you could eliminate the Loreley song from the collective consciousness at that point. So what Goebbels & Co. did was to decree that the song would only be reprinted with the signature "old folk song, writer unknown"). If you think this was immediately revised after 1945, think again. It took a shameful time till "Text: Heinrich Heine" was restored in all reprints. (YouTube still calls it "old folk song", btw, though Heine's name duly given. )
If you're wondering: was Heine using, in his original poem, which is about a fisherman entranced by a mermaid and thus crashing on the Loreley cliff in the river Rhine, a popular fairy tale of his own day? Wellllll. Not really. The first guy who came up with the idea of using the name of the Loreley cliff as the name of a nymph whose beauty lures any man seeing it to his doom was, wait for it, Clemens Brentano (remember him?). Heine read Brentano's version and thereafter created his own.
In conclusion: German folklore: we have it! Straight from the late 18th and 19th century.
The Other Days
