#german legends

[opera-ghosts]

"ZU NEUEN TATEN, TEURER HELDE" Götterdämmerung - R. WAGNER Here some Siegfrieds and Brünnhildes.

Peter Cornelius as Siegfried; Copenhagen, 1905

Charles Dalmores as Siegfried; Brussels, 1902

Ejnar Forchhammer as Siegfried; ?, ?

Paul Franz as Siegfried; Paris, 1925

Hans Grahl as Siegfried; Hamburg, 1934

Alois Hadwiger as Siegfried; Coburg-Gotha, 1907

Ottfried Hagen as Siegfried; Munich, 1908

Ernst Kraus as Siegfried; Berlin, ca. 1907

Gorrhelf Pistor as Siegfried; Bayreuth, 1931

Julius Pölzer as Siegfried; Munich, 1932

Erik Schmedes as Siegfried; Vienna, ca. 1910

Josef Schöffel as Siegfried; Karlsruhe, ca. 1921

Hans Tänzler as Siegfried; Karlsruhe, 1910

Jacques Urlus as Siegfried; Berlin ?, ca. 1907

Fritz Vogelstrom as Siegfried; Mannheim, ca. 1909

Hermann Winkelmann as Siegfried; Vienna, 1880

Marie Brema as Brünnhilde; London, 1897

Louise Grandjean as Brünnhilde; Paris, 1908

Felia Litvinne as Brünnhilde with Grane; Brussels, 1902

Katharina Senger-Bettaque as Brünnhilde; Berlin, 1898

Fanni Wahrmann-Schöllinger as Brünnhilde with Grane; Hannover, 1920

Hedwig Reicher-Kindermann as Brünnhilde; Leipzig, ca. 1886

[septembergold]

The Golem as a Classic Silent Movie

Actor and director Paul Wegener retold the story of the golem in the same period as Gustav Meyrick. He brought the legend to the silent screen three times in just five years: 1915, 1917, and 1920. In all three films, Wegener played the role of the golem himself, leaving a lasting mark on the visualization of the figure with his character's striking silhouette. Wegener achieved world renown for his final Golem film, made in 1920, The Golem: How He Came into the World. This classic silent film was a milestone in the horror genre.

[mask131]

Fragments of fright (9)

From Richard Cavendish’s The Great Book of the Supernatural

THE MESSENGERS OF THE AFTERLIFE

Most people do not know when they will die - but a few of them are apparently warned of their imminent demise, thanks to the appearance of a ghost. This messenger of the afterlife can be a wraith, or a mysterious animal, and many families are proud of "owning" one.

The Hohenzollern dynasty, which reigned successively over the Brandeburg, Prussia and Germany (until the abdication of the kaiser Wilhelm II at the end of WWI) was boasting the existence of a "family ghost". This specter tied to their bloodline was a White Lady - a female ghost dressed in white, with a mourning armband, usually seen before the death of a member of the family, and appearing in the royal residences of Berlin or other Germany regions. It was believed that she might be the ghost of a princess of the 15th century, who was cruelly abused by her husband, who was a Hohenzollern. The dynasty of the Hesse of Darmstadt (Germany) also had its death herald - a Black Lady this time, in a mourning outfit, her face hidden by a dark veil. This ghost was supposed to be the archduchess Maria-Anna, wife of the archduke Ferdinand.

In the Danish royal family meanwhile, disasters were believed to be announced by the apparition at Gurre, south of Helsingor (a location that inspired the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet), of the ghost of king Valdemar IV, who ruled on the Denmark in th 14th century and died at Gure in 1375. Another strange fact of the history of the Danish crown concerns the queen Astrid, killed in 1935 by a car accident. Some times after her death, she supposedly appeared before numerous people during a spiritism séance organized at Copenhague by the medium Einar Nielsen. A picture of her "manifestation" was apparently taken - but unfortunately, these kind of pictures are very easy to falsify and thus do not make an actual, solid proof of the ghost's apparition.

The Hasburgs, who ruled over the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were traditionally warned of any upcoming tragedy by the appearance of a group of great white birds circling in the sky. They were seen in 1889, soon before the double suicide of the heir-prince Rudolf and his mistress in Mayerling. Later, the emperor Franz-Josef the First also saw them in 1898, on the eve of the murder of his beloved Elisabeth. Finally, these sinister birds were spotted in 1914, before the Sarajevo attack which killed the archduke Franz-Ferdinand and caused World War I.

The most famous of these "messengers of death" is without a doubt the Irish banshee, which makes the pride and glory of the greatest and oldest families of the island. The banshees howls and wails with a melancholic voice through the night, crying the death of a family's member soon before it actually happens. She can appear as a beautiful maiden with a red shirt, or a green dress under a gray cloak ; or she can appear as an old hag. This "dual face", the beautiful maiden and the ugly hag, were the usual manifestations and appearances of the great goddesses of the pre-Christian Celtic religion, of which the banshee seems to be a remnant. It seems that getting rid of a banshee is hard, since there are records of them still wailing near the old domains of families that left Ireland a long time ago. A few years before the publication of this book, an American that was visiting the Aran island in the Galway bay, organized a party, with lot of music and dancing. As the night was ending, the young man returned home, playing accordion. The noise he made distressed the neighborhood, and someone had to go explain to a poor frightened old man that what he heard wasn't the screams of a banshee, but the sounds of a drunk playing very badly the accordion. Reassured, the old man knew three more weeks of peace... Until he heard the ACTUAL wails of the banshee, and soon after died.

According to a very old tradition, the death of the bishops of Salisbury is announced by the arrival of mysterious white birds flyig over the plain. Other bad omens - not necessarily meaning "death" - are the black dogs, or rather the black hounds, usually of an enormous size, that supposedly haunt the British countryside. Peel's castle, on the isle of Man, is the lair of one of those monsters, the Moddy Dhu, whose mere sight causes a person's death. You will also be doomed to die if you meet the Shriker dog, which hides in the Burnley cemetery (Lancashire). Many more sinisters black hounds are believe to wander on the paths leading to cemeteries. In a lot of popular beliefs and local folklore, dogs are associated with death, probably because in the distant past hungry dogs used to dig up corpses to eat them. There could also be something related to the strong belief that dogs are able to sense entities invisible to humans. Ghosts of dogs are particularly dreaded in the East-Anglia, where strikes the formidable Black Shuck, whose only eye shines in the darkness.

During World War II, an American air-pilot and his wife lived in Walberswick, in the Suffolk, and they had there a terrifying experience. During one whole night, an enormous black dog tried to enter in their house, and they only prevented it from doing so by piling up furniture in front of the door, that the animal nearly split open. At dawn, the beast left, but without leaving any prints in the mud surrounding the house. This event happened during a storm night - which reminds one of the old beliefs claiming that storms are caused by the mad run in the countryside of a pack of infernal hounds, whose howls causes death, madness and misfortune. In some regions, these hounds are led by the "Wild Hunter". In Denmark, it is king Valdemar that leads the pack, in Normandy the Devil himself ; in northern England it is "Gabriel's hounds" led by the Angel of Death, while in the Dartmoor the dogs follow sir Francis Drake riding a hearse. All these legends inspired without a doubt Conan Doyle when he wrote one of Sherlock Holmes' most famous adventures - The Hound of the Baskervilles.

[adarkrainbow]

A look at Silly Symphonies: The Pied Piper

The Pied Piper of Hamelin is one of the numerous Silly Symphonies short, released in 1933. We are not anymore with the exception that was the Three Little Pigs series: we return to simplistic cartoons with little real dialogues, just sung lines, and a more predominant part given to visual gags and movement effects.

I want to point out that analyzing The Pied Piper of Hamelin under the angle of fairytales is dreadfully unfair, because unlike what some people think, this is actually a true German myth, a legend that was built through numerous pieces of literature and oral testimonies: the tale of the Brothers Grimm was just one step and “piece” in the construction of this myth. Goethe and Browning created literary versions of the legend just as famous and influential as the one of the Grimms. But given this blog is solely and exclusively focused on fairytales, I’ll only compare the short to the Grimm fairytale. 

EDIT: In fact upon working on this post I realized that I was dreadfully mistaken myself on one point... the Brothers Grimm never wrote a fairytale called “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”. They did write a version of the story yet, but it wasn’t a German “märchen” - they published it in a different book of theirs called “German legends”, and under a very different title, “The Children of Hamelin”. Or rather “The Children of Hamln” as in German the town is called “Hamln” (Hamelin is just its adaptation in the English language). I was wondering why the tale wasn’t in my own complete edition of Grimms’ fairytales. 

So yet another example of non-fairytale material that were later popularized by “popular culture” as a “fairytale”... I will still cover up this Silly Symphony short, but I will be more careful in the future. 

# The story begins, just like the legend, with the town of Hamelin plagued by rats. This adaptation, due to being for kids, mostly insists on how the rats enter everywhere to eat all the food around.

# When the Pied Piper arrives, he appears as a tall and thin, gangly character, dressed in bright yellows and reds, with black hair and a pointy nose - a design to have him be the opposite of the Mayor character, who is a fat, round, elderly man all in bulbuous shapes and curves, dressed in dark reds and purples. We should note that already the Piper’s appearance is a departure from the original legend, which claims that the Piper was a strange and wonderful figure dressed in a “cloak of many colors”. And the instrument that the Piper plays in this short looks like a clarinet, not a flute (in fact in the German legend, the player is a “piper” playing a “pipe” - a word that designates a LOT of various instruments, just not flutes as people tend to believe. I do not know the original German word for the instrument, so if anyone can help me on that, thank you!)

# A BIG change in the story: in the original legend, it is the Pied Piper himself who offers his services to the town upon his arrival, and who imposes his own fee as a “fixed sum of money”. In this short, it is rather the mayor himself who loudly proclaims he’ll give a bag of gold to whoever would solve the problem, before promptly agreeing to the Piper’s offer. 

# As with the Three Little Pigs shorts, due to the audience being children, the Disney writers decided to “soften up” things. Notably, in the original legend the Piper drowns the rats in the river. Here... the Piper conjures up a magical giant cheese and once all the rats are in it, it makes the cheese disappear. 

... We’ll come back to that later. All I’ll point out is that from the cheese in Hamelin to the magical cheese of the Piper... THEY’RE ALL SWISS CHEESE!!!!  In a supposedly German legend!!! 

# In the short, after the Piper did his job, the greedy citizen decide to simply not give him a bag of gold, but rather one gold coin, while also mocking him as being a powerless pipe-player locked outside of their city. The Pied Piper warns them that he is not as powerless as he seems and could take the children of Hamelin away, to which the mocking citizens actually DARE him to do so.

Which leads to what we know. In the original legend, things went VERY differently. As I said before, it was the Piper that had imposed his own fee and services ; but also the story describes the citizens as regretting their promise once free on the plague. Not only does it mean they actually do not give him anything, not even a coin - but it also actually reveals the citizens were honest in their first promise, and only came to take back their word when they were safe. There is also no explicit idea of mockery. 

But the other main change is that in the short the Piper’s “vengeance” occurs on the very same day as the rat solving (of course, due to the shortness of the cartoon) ; while in the original legend the Piper first left, “bitter”, before returning much later, dressed as a “grim huntsman” with a “wondrous red hat” (in fact this time the design of the short does fit - kind of - as the Piper wears a “red huntsman hat”). 

# Speaking of “revenge”, this is the second big difference in terms of plot. In the original legend, the Pied Piper steals the children away as a revenge and a punishment for not being paid. Here, the Piper (on top of actually being dared by the Hamelin citizens), takes the children away not as a “punishment” but as an act of goodness. Indeed, he explicitely says that he regrets that children would grow up with such greedy and dishonest adults, and he promptly promises to take them away from their nasty influence. AND, when he does sing his pipe, we actually do see the life conditions of the children. As it turns out, they are all basically slaves to the adults: all of them toil and exhaust themselves working all the menial tasks and hard labors - they clean the houses and wash the clothes and carry the water and chop the wood... And the Piper is snatching them away to have a “better” life. 

# And what is this “better life”? Similarly to the rats, the Piper conjures up a supernatural sight of food: an entire land, hidden inside a mountain, entirely made of giant candy. And just like the cheese disappeared once all the rats were in it, as soon as the Piper gets all the children in the candy-land he closes the mountain behind him so that no one can follow. But unlike the rats, whose fate is unclear as the cheese just disappears into thin fair, the children are seen to actually be gifted a “paradise” of endless games and never-ending sweets. In the original legend, the fate of the children was actually left unspoken - the record of the Grimm Brothers only says that the Piper took them at the “heart of hill” and that they were never seen again. No idea what happened to them. And while the Brothers never speak of “death” unlike for the rats, they do describe it as a “calamity” and stress the great grief and despair of the citizens of Hamelin - BUT in turn the Brothers do leave a theory/belief according to which they travelled magically through a cave tunnels all the way to Transylvania. 

# A child on crutches is the last of the children to reach the magical mountain - but as soon as he arrives he can walk normally again and is welcomed by the Piper, again highlighting the paradise-nature of the candy-land and the benevolence of the Piper whose entire work seems here to deliver humans from their plagues - removing the rats from a town, removing children from a life of hard work and abuse, removing the physical weakness of a little boy... 

But it also seems to be a nod to the original legend, or rather a twist on it, as several versions of the story do include a child that was “saved” from the Piper and not taken away because he was lame and couldn’t go as fast as the others. The Brothers Grimm themselves did not include the lame-kid in their record of the legend, merely speaking of two children that couldn’t “keep up” with the Piper, one blind the other “dumb”, and one more child that returned from the hill because he wanted to “fetch his coat” before going inside. 

[the-evil-clergyman]

The Rhinemaidens by Gaston Bussière (1906)

[silkwound]

The legend of the Freischütz is a German folk tale that centers on a marksman who makes a pact with the devil to ensure his bullets never miss. He receives seven of them, with six hitting any desired target and the seventh controlled by the devil himself.

[illustratus]

Faust and Mephistopheles by Gaston Cervelli

[peachssodapop]

the mention of their different dialects and languages immediately had my enraptured

so here's a very quickly drawn comic based on I cannot seem to find a good german equivalent to silly

[itsagrummel]

just a normal day on german twitter with this tweet by El Hotzo

Harry Potter:

arrogant celeb

goes to a posh school in a castle in England

did not learn something proper

needed 7 books to kill the villain

Krabat:

normal dude

works at a mill in Lusatia

based apprenticeship as a miller

1 book, quick work with the villain

[currantlee]

Something I love about the memory of Zelda and Sonia in the German dub of TotK...

(Translation: And your Link, too, is surely awaiting your return.)

Sonia uses the phrase "dein Link" ("your Link") here, which in German is a common phrase to indicate the belief that someone might have romantic feelings for another person. And the way Pauliner Weiner (Sonia's German VA) delivers this line very much indicates that she is indeed teasing Zelda a little here! Sonia ships Zelink confirmed!!

But wait. There's more!

(Translation: May one ask who this Link is?)

Rauru definitely notices this too! His tone, as well as the use of the very specific article "dieser" ("this") indicate as much. If he was simply curious about who Link is in order to follow the conversation, he would more likely use the phrase "Darf ich fragen, wer Link ist?" ("May I ask who Link is?"). He is also teasing Zelda a little here.

Zelda's reply is also very sweet! While her first two lines are nothing special (she is essentially just recapping the events Breath of the Wild, as well as what led up to it), it gets interesting once Rauru reacts to her description, once again in a somewhat teasing manner (indicated by both the delivery and the language of the line):

(Translation: Oh, a hero you say.)

To which Zelda replies with:

(Translation: Link is the most steadfast and fearless knight who ever existed.)

(Translation: Yes...)

(Translation: He is so strong...)

That last line is pretty much the same in English, but Julia Casper (Zelda's German VA) does an amazing job making it sound like Zelda is not only admiring Link throughout this entire short monologue she is having, but like she is talking more to herself than to Rauru and Sonia, almost like she forgets they're there for a moment because she is thinking about Link. I really loved this little touch!

Also note that Zelda is not explicitly talking about physical strength in the last line (although she might be. It isn't clarified, leaving the interpretation of what kind of strength she is talking about up to the player).

(Translation: ... and on top of it all, he has a good heart!)

This last part seems to be directed at Rauru and Sonia again. But we're still not done!

After Rauru remarks that Zelda seems to think highly of Link and that the way she's talking about her knight makes him want to meet him, Sonia agrees and delivers a final line that, once again, makes it very clear that the two of them are engaging in a little bit of good-mannered teasing in this scene (both from what's actually said here and how Paulina Weiner delivers the line):

(Translation: Chivalrous, and full of gallantry...)

(Translation: Don't make us so curious, Zelda!)

And then they all break out in light-hearted laughter.

All in all, I really love this scene! Huge respect to the German VAs, who did an absolutely stellar job (not just in this scene, but for the game in general - especially Julia Casper!).

[opera-ghosts]

"NUN ZÄUME DEIN ROSS, REISIGE MAID!" DIE WALKÜRE - R. WAGNER (2 act)

Here some Brünnhildes

Mathilde Fraenkel-Claus as Brünnhilde; ?, (ca. 1902)

Marie Burk-Berger as Brünnhilde; Munich, 1907

Lucienne Breval as Brünnhilde (print); Paris, 1892

Berta Morena as Brünnhilde; Munich, 1907

Emmy Hoy as Brünnhilde; Kiel, 1912

Maria Maier as Brünnhilde; Mainz, ?

Maria Gembarzewska / Maryla von Falken as Brünnhilde; Munich, 1913

Helena Forti as Brünnhilde; Dresden, 1913

Loni Meinert as Brünnhilde; Mannheim, 1914

Gabriele Englerth as Brünnhilde; Wiesbaden, ca. 1915

Theo Drill-Oridge as Brünnhilde; Hamburg, ca. 1923

Helene Wildbrunn as Brünnhilde; Vienna, ca. 1923

Elsa Alsen as Brünnhilde; New York, 1926

Eugenie Burkhardt as Brünnhilde; Dresden, 1926

Nanny Larsén-Todsen as Brünnhilde; Bayreuth, 1927

Olga Haselbeck as Brünnhilde; Budapest, (ca. 1930)

Henriette Gottlieb as Brünnhilde; Berlin, 1930

Frida Leider as Brünnhilde; Berlin, ca. 1934

[thefugitivesaint]

Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805-1874), ''The Heroic Life and Exploits of Siegfried, the Dragon Slayer: An Old German Story'' by Guido Görres, 1848 Source

[official-german-gaming]

Hey warum heißt der so

[lionofchaeronea]

The Grail Castle, Hans Thoma, 1899

[holocrone]

Böse Hexen gibt es nicht!

BIBI BLOCKSBERG (2002) dir. Hermine Huntgeburth

[the-evil-clergyman]

Illustrations from Undine by Arthur Rackham (1909)