The Brothers Grimm

Today (Dec. 20, 2012) is the 200th anniversary of the publication of "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" ("Children's and Household Tales") by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.   I'm a fan of fairy tales for several reasons.  And I'll be the first to admit that the original versions of "Children's and Household Tales" aren't appropriate for children, even though child-psychologist Bruno Bettelheim suggested that these fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms.  But when Libby Copeland pointed out in "Why I don't want to read fairy tales to my daughter", that birds pecked out the eyes of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters, an evil queen is forced to dance herself to death wearing red-hot iron shoes (Snow White); a prince falls in love with a dead girl and begs permission to take ownership of her lifeless body (same); a man abandons his children in a forest to starve at the behest of his wife (Hansel and Gretel), then I had to disagree with Dr. Bettelheim.

The brothers can be forgiven for publishing some of the depressing aspects of the stories, because they too (like Hänsel and Gretel) experienced hunger as a result of their poverty.

The brothers realized that the industrial revolution threatened the oral tradition of story telling, and so they began collecting traditional stories with the purpose of creating a scholarly treatise and of preserving the stories as they had
been handed down from generation to generation. Among the stories are "Cinderella" (Aschenputtel), "The Frog Prince" (Der Froschkönig), "Hansel and Gretel" (Hänsel und Gretel), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" (Rumpelstilzchen), and "Snow White" (Schneewittchen).

They used the stories to study the different dialects in German, and later to study the history of the Germanic languages (including English). They identified the Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift), which is very helpful to me when learning German words, because the relationship between German and English words is sometimes obvious when you know, for example, that the p-sound and the f-sound can be exchanged, and so can the d-sound and t-sound (English: brother, West Frisian, Dutch: broeder, German: Bruder, Gothic: broþar, Icelandic, Faroese: bróðir, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian: broder).

One of my favorite aspects of fairy tales is the fragments of old religions and faiths reflected in the stories that the brothers thought continued to exist and survive through the telling of stories.  This is rich soil for scholars of comparative mythology, whether structural, linguistic, or psychological.  A good example is The Three Green Twigs: "Once upon a time there was a hermit who lived in the forest at the foot of a mountain, and he passed the time by praying and doing good deeds. To honor God he would carry several pails of water up the mountainside each evening. Since there was always a hard wind that dried out the air and soil in the mountain peak, many an animal was able to quench its thirst because of the water he carried, and many a plant was refreshed."  This story ends with a dried stick putting out new green shoots, which symbolizes God's forgiveness.  The same symbolism is found at the end of Wagner's "Tannhäuser", my favorite opera.

Advent wreath

It's the first Sunday in Advent, so we lit the first candle in our advent wreath.  The Christmas market in Erlangen opened Friday, and we bought the wreath along with our other christmas supplies during the times between drinking Glühwein (hot spiced wine) and eating roasted chestnuts.

Although there is evidence of pre-Christian Germanic peoples using wreathes with lit candles during the cold and dark December days as a sign of hope in the future warm and extended-sunlight days of Spring, the first documented used of an advent wreath is a relatively new compared to Christmas trees and their ornaments (see http://cardinaltrees.blogspot.de/2010/12/chrstmas-ornaments-in-lauscha-germany.html). The first advent wreath was bigger than today's.  Back in 1833, a Lutheran pastor by the name of Johann Hinrich Wichern opened a Sunday school in Hamburg.  Each year the children would ask so often during advent if Christmas had arrived that, by 1839, he put a candle for every day of advent around a wagen wheel.  He lit one small candle each day except Sunday, when he lit a large candle.  Today, only the large candles remain in our advent wreaths.

This protestant custom spread in Germany to the Roman Catholic cathedral in Cologn in 1925, and in the 1930s it apeared in the U.S.

Germans and their bread

There is an article about bread in this month's issue of Deutsch Perfekt, a magazine for people learning German.  I've know since I got here that bread is one of the foods that Germans do really well (along with beer, cakes, and meats).  The article says that Germans eat 52 kg of bread per household per year.  But it never gets boring, because there are over 300 different kinds of bread in Germany, more than any other country, and over 1,200 varieties of rolls and mini-breads.  They use wheat and Rye, like we Americans, but they also use grains that are rare in the U.S., like Dinkel. (I think that's Spelt in English.)  One reason for the variety is that Germany was made up of many Principalities, Duchies, and other small states from the time of the Germanic tribes through the Holy Roman Empire up to the time of Kaiser Wilhelm.  So the kultur wasn't homonginized like it was in countries made up of Kingdoms.  Germans still have many names for the heel of the loaf, like Scherzl in Bavaria or Knäuschen in Saarland. 

Some recipies are quite complicated. According to the original German recipe for Pumpernickel, the rye meal is boiled for hours to soften it. The dough is baked in a square bread form at 395°F (200°C). Afterward, it is steamed at 215°F (100°C) for 16-24 hours. This allows the ingredients to caramelize, giving the bread its dark brown color and its lightly sweet aroma and taste.

By the way, the origin of the name "Pumpernickel", although not known for certain, has three popular explanations:

1. One explanation comes from the town of Osnabrück. During a famine in 1450, local officials ordered a special bread to be baked for the poor. The bread was named bonum paniculum, meaning "good bread." Since the people didn't understand Latin, they pronounced it "Bompernickel," then over time it became known as "Pumpernickel." Today, in Osnabrück, the Pumpernickel Tower (Pernickelturm) still stands. This is where the bonum paniculum is said the have been baked. 
2.  Another story that people like to tell is about a french soldier and his horse "Nickel." In the 18th century, as the frenchman was traveling through Westphalia, he was offered some dark bread by a farmer. He refused the bread and stated that it was "bon pour Nickel" - good for his horse, Nickel.
3. The third explanation goes deep into German language history. "Nickel" was the shortened version of the name for Nikolaus. "Pumper" was the word for flatulence (gas). So, putting the words together, the word Pumpernickel meant Nikolaus' gas

There are several museums dedicated to bread.  We visited one  in Ulm called the Museum of Bread Culture.