Lecture 21

Why are the Grimms so into fairy tales?

• The overwhelming desire for a unified Germany.
  • The Grimms thought the 300 principalities in Germany were such a mess.
  • The Grimms lived in the West, where France kept invading, and people were worried about losing their culture.
• The bourgeois: a new dominant cultural force that decides what “educated” and “cultured” means.
• The Grimms were nationalist, but not in the way that we think of.
  • They’re still friends of democracy.
  • They saw themselves as patriots working towards a shared nation.
• And it worked!
• The Grimms appropriated peasant culture and made it bourgeois.
  • All the principalities could point to this and be like, “yeah, that’s us, I’ve heard that story too!”.
• The book of fairy tales made Germany as much as anything else.
  • The idea of Germany and this book are so tied together.

Post-WWII

How did West Germany and East Germany contaminate the Grimms’ tales to help their needs?

• At first, West Germany didn’t change things very much. War bad, bourgeois good, capitalism good, don’t rock the boat, upward mobility, everybody can get a job, strong middle class.
  • Everything’s great, ignore the Nazi stuff, happy ending.
    • The Grimms’ tales become very popular!
• In the 1950s and 1960s, hippies start asking questions like, “Why is it okay that all these adults were Nazis?”.
  • New ways to read fairy tales: maybe things are complex, and things aren’t always happily ever after.
    • Reframing
  • New types of tales in West Germany around this time:
• East Germany played up the working-class parts of the fairy tales and toppling of aristocracy, and got rid of money, revenge, racism, etc.
  • A lot of this was done with film, not writing.