Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany

[SurfieTX]

A whole new world of magic animals, brave young princes and evil witches has come to light with the discovery of 500 new fairytales, which were locked away in an archive in Regensburg, Germany for over 150 years. The tales are part of a collection of myths, legends and fairytales, gathered by the local historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth (1810–1886) in the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz at about the same time as the Grimm brothers were collecting the fairytales that have since charmed adults and children around the world.

Last year, the Oberpfalz cultural curator Erika Eichenseer published a selection of fairytales from Von Schönwerth's collection, calling the book Prinz Roßzwifl. This is local dialect for "scarab beetle". The scarab, also known as the "dung beetle", buries its most valuable possession, its eggs, in dung, which it then rolls into a ball using its back legs. Eichenseer sees this as symbolic for fairytales, which she says hold the most valuable treasure known to man: ancient knowledge and wisdom to do with human development, testing our limits and salvation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/05/five-hundred-fairytales-discovered-germany

 

[LaborDayRN]

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing this!

 

[zwiebel]

Thank you for this, the English-language news sites here in Germany don't seem to have covered this at all. Wonder why they were undiscovered for so long?

 

[indicajane]

But aren't ,ost fairy tales eventually oral?

 

[zwiebel]

indicajane, you're absolutely right. I once met someone who was a professional fairytale-teller, which I thought was a pretty silly, made-up occupation for a grown woman. Until she invited me to a telling, and I found myself sitting at her knee like a five-year-old, along with a bunch of other oldies, completely entranced!

I can't really find anything in the German news here (but my German's rubbish). I googled Prince Rosszwifl though, and a lot of older stuff came up - including this complete tale in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/04/a-brand-new-fairytale.html

This has also caused me to search my entire collection of German children's books, found in my attic when I moved in. Nothing there but.....I've started to recall a conversation I had once with a woman from the former DDR (former communist part of eastern Germany). We were talking about fave books we had as kids, and she was shocked I hadn't heard of her favourite, where the princess was the hero. It began with R, but that's all I recall.

The communist authorities didn't pay an awful lot of attention to western copyrights then, and often rewrote books (with Russian authors) with changes that suited the regime. Just wondering if the prince could have become a princess in those days? I'll ask my friend more, next time I see her.

Last time an article caused me to search my collection of old, found books, I found an important bit of info relating to a war criminal that someone had been searching for over the past four years. I'd been considering throwing them away, they were so brown coal-dust encrusted, but I'll hang onto them now.