Fairy tales.
We grow up on them.
Fantasy stories told to us as children with a moral or a lesson made clear at the end.
But those fairytales weren’t always as innocent as we know them to be today.
They were actually very dark, violent allegories that scared children and adults alike.
Take the cannibal witch from Hansel and Gretel.
The trope of the evil old lady in a creepy hut in the woods lying in wait for victims
is something we see often even outside of the fairy tale genre
The gingerbread house, baking children in ovens, the desire for human flesh, a secluded
location in the woods—while witches have been associated with these characteristics
before, it wasn’t until brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm wrote it all down together that
this legendary monster was made.
They collected their stories from oral folklore accounts, so in order to truly understand
the origins of one of the most recognizable tales today, we need to look further in history
- into the witch trials of Germany and the famines that led people to make some very
desperate decisions.
It’s a complex history.
Speaking of which, stick around after the episode for a special Monstrum announcement!
[Monstrum intro.]
The original story of Hansel and Gretel was first published in Germany in 1812, with the
first English translation in 1884.
It tells the tale of two siblings, a boy and a girl whose family has nothing left to eat.
Their father, a poor woodcutter, is convinced by the mother to abandon the children in the
deepest part of the forest to starve to death.
Her philosophy is that it would be better to have them killed by wild animals than to
watch them starve.
The first attempt goes poorly.
Hearing their parents’ plans for them, Hansel sneaks out of the house to collect white stones.
The next morning when the parents lead the siblings deep into the woods, Hansel secretly
leaves a trail of these white pebbles back to their house.
Hansel and Gretel are told to build a fire and that their parents will come back with
more wood.
But when darkness falls, the parents had yet to return.
Luckily, the moon shines bright and the siblings follow the pebble trail home, to the happiness
of their father and disappointment of their mother.
Again food runs out, and again the mother insists the children should be abandoned.
This time, Hansel uses a small amount of bread to make another trail through the woods as
their parents walk them deeper into the dense forest for the second time.
The parents leave and night falls again, but to their dismay, the children realize that
birds have eaten their breadcrumb trail.
After three days of wandering in the woods, they stumble upon a small house built entirely
of breads and cakes.
The whole thing is covered with sweets, the windows made of fine sugar.
The starving Hansel and Gretel begin eating chunks of the house when they are startled
by a little old woman who takes them inside and serves them milk, fruit, and sweets.
They fall asleep with full bellies.
The old woman, it turns out, is a “wicked witch”
who built her house to lure children in so she could kill and eat them.
When the children wake she throws Hansel into a small chicken coop and she forces Gretel
to do chores, including feeding her brother to fatten him up for slaughter.
Hansel manages to prolong his demise by poking out a chicken bone for the witch to feel when
she checks his fatness.
After four weeks, the witch tells Gretel to check the bread baking in the oven, secretly
intending to push the child in and bake her.
But Gretel manages to outsmart the witch by tricking her into looking into the oven herself.
As soon as the old woman steps inside, Gretel quickly locks her in.
Gretel frees Hansel as the witch screams.
Before they flee, they steal her precious stones and pearls.
The children manage to find their way home and make their father a rich man.
Their mother has died.
Abandoning children and baking an old lady in an oven.
What a pleasant story.
What could possibly have prompted the creation of this twisted tale?
Well, we asked our friend Lindsay found some interesting theories...
Well, for one thing the 1810 manuscript written by Jacob and Wilhelm, constructed a version
of the Hansel and Gretel story from one told by Dortchen Wild, who would eventually become
Wilhelm’s wife.
Although Dortchen grew up in Germany, she had French ancestry.
Which might explain why the story bears quite a few similarities to the 17th century French
fairytale “Le Petit Poucet” by Charles Perrault.
The story includes a poor woodcutter who cannot feed his children, so he and his wife abandon
them, despite her protests.
The smallest of the children saves himself and his siblings from the woods once with
pebbles and tries to again with breadcrumbs.
An evil cannibal ogre tries to eat them before accidentally killing his own daughters instead.
What I’m really interested in is where the stories diverge.
The change of a male ogre into a female witch for one.
And why do the Grimm Brothers add in the house made from bread?
Why would they have presented the mother as the murderous parent?
I have some theories, but first we need to address the element of the story that starts
the whole thing off—the willing abandonment of one’s own children.
In the 18th century and early 19th century, Germany suffered from multiple famines.
It was estimated there was a 40% population loss to starvation and disease between 1708-1711.
Another famine hit in 1771-72.
The Grimm brothers were born in 1785 and 1786 so they might have felt or seen the lingering
effects of these losses, or at the very least, encountered older people in their folklore
interviews who lived through these events.
One of the realities of famine at this time was that children might be abandoned or even
killed because there was not enough food to go around.
Some tried to justify these deaths, believing they helped ensure the survival of the family
as a whole.
It can be argued the Hansel and Gretel story served as a way to rationalize such dramatic,
horrific measures.
During the second half of the 18th century, it was illegal for mothers not to report their
pregnancies.
All other individuals were obligated to report any suspected pregnancies.
Some women believed hiding pregnancy was necessary for their economic, social, and even personal
survival.
Court records from infanticide trials during this time support that, naming “poverty,
fear of punishment, and fear of social shame” as the primary given motives.
Interestingly, even though both fathers and mothers could be accused of murdering their
children, it was only mothers who were charged with infanticide.
All of this historical context might explain why it is the mother in the 1812 Grimm story
who insists on abandoning the children.
So what about the wicked witch?
Germany had its own unique interpretation of an evil cannibal monster.
The “Kinderlfresser” or “child-devourer” served as both a fairy tale and warning to
children.
These ghoulish creatures were usually described as large, hairy men with a sack full of children
it would greedily stuff into its mouth—a surefire way to keep kids obedient.
The female version of this monster, [Butzen-Bercht,] resembled the stereotypical witch: an old
hunchback with a hooked nose and messy hair.
So perhaps because of this, when people in Germany were prosecuted for witchcraft they
were often also accused of kidnapping and eating children.
The whole “baking the kids in the oven” aspect of Hansel and Gretel may even have
its own explanation.
In my research, I stumbled across a series of German witch trials in the 16th century
[Nördlingen trials] where 35 supposed witches were sentenced.
Under torture, some of them confessed to child cannibalism and “cooking infant flesh in
copper pots.”
They also even claimed “to process the dead children’s bodies and bake themn in ovens.”
Sound familiar?
So we’ve talked about the witch, but what about the house made from bread and sweets?
The words gingerbread house are an English translation of the German word [Pfefferkuchenhaus].
From what I could find, the Brothers Grimm were the first people to write this into a
story with a witch.
They made the real-world gingerbread house popular.
Or rather, an opera about Hansel and Gretel did.
Overtime the house evolved, becoming a famous icon largely because of Engelbert Humperdinck’s
operatic interpretation of the fairy tale, first performed in December 1893.
The house is described made of cake and referred to as the gingerbread house.
The set design for the opera reinforced the image; it made something that had only existed
in the imagination more concrete.
In addition to being made from cake, the house was surrounded by a wall of gingerbread children,
the victims of the wicked witch.
In other words, he toned down the overt cannibalism and upped the aesthetic factor.
The Brothers Grimm took oral tradition and hundreds of years of German folklore and made
it into one of the most popular stories of all time, that continues to frighten children
to this day.
So when you’re constructing a house from cookies and frosting and watching questionable
decisions by great actors, remember that some things have a deeper and darker meaning.