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About this episode
Hansel and Gretel were really two adult bakers who murdered a rival in the Spessart forest in 1647 to steal her gingerbread recipe. That’s what a 1963 book claimed, and half of Germany believed it. The catch: it was a satire by the cartoonist Hans Traxler. In episode 4 of my Grimm series, I look at invented origins: from the Baker Witch to the Snow White of Lohr, which started as an April Fool’s joke among tavern regulars and now appears on highway signs, to the question of why one region of Hesse calls itself Little Red Riding Hood Country. And why fairy tales so badly need a home address.
📚 Sources and Further Reading
Vanessa Joosen: Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual Dialogue between Fairy-Tale Scholarship and Postmodern Retellings. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011. → Includes an analysis of Traxler’s book as a “fictive nonfictional text.”
Donald Haase (ed.): The Reception of Grimms’ Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. → Discusses the reception of Traxler’s hoax among other responses to the Grimms.
Tim Harford: “The Truth About Hansel and Gretel.” Cautionary Tales podcast, October 2021. → An English-language podcast episode on Traxler’s satire.
Christine Shojaei Kawan: “Innovation, Persistence and Self-Correction: The Case of Snow White.” Estudos de Literatura Oral 11–12 (2005–2006), pp. 237–252. → On the international tradition of Snow White and attempts to localize it.
Hans Traxler: Die Wahrheit über Hänsel und Gretel. Frankfurt am Main: Bärmeier & Nikel, 1963 (new edition Stuttgart: Reclam, 2007). → The satire itself; the new edition includes an appendix on its origins and reception. (German)
Wolfgang Vorwerk: “Das ‘Lohrer Schneewittchen’. Zur Fabulologie eines Märchens.” In: Christian Grandl / Kevin J. McKenna (eds.): Bis dat, qui cito dat. Festschrift for Wolfgang Mieder. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015, pp. 491–503. → The detailed origin story of Snow White of Lohr, by a member of the Lohr circle. Available online via the town of Lohr. (German)
Bernhard Lauer: “Wem gehört ‘Schneewittchen’?” Hessische Blätter für Volks- und Kulturforschung 44 (2009), pp. 390–425. → A folklorist’s view of the places that claim Snow White. (German)
Eckhard Sander: Schneewittchen. Märchen oder Wahrheit? Gudensberg-Gleichen: Wartberg, 1994. → The Margaretha von Waldeck and Bergfreiheit thesis. (German)
Hans Moser: “Vom Folklorismus in unserer Zeit.” Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 58 (1962). → The essay that introduced the concept of folklorism. (German)