Why does Germany have so many good fairy/folk tales?

Question

Does it seem that it has more than most countries?

How did they come about?

Answer 1

It's not so much that they had more, but that they were systematically recorded early by the Brothers Grimm who were folklorists. Also it didn't hurt that English is a Germanic language and some of the stories would have had roots shared with English folktales.

Also, some stories we know and think of as Grimm stories, aren't-- they just get lumped together. Cinderella, for example (which has lots of variants in lots of cultures, including Chinese, Irish, Egyptian, etc.) was French, yet many people are convinced it was from Grimm.

People also think Hans Christian Andersen's stories are folktales, but they are original stories-- he made them up himself.

If you go to your local library, you can find a LOT of folk and fairy tales from different countries-- there are a lot of good Irish tales, Russian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, etc. (There are also Native American tales but some Native Americans object to having their stories retold, since they believe them to be religious stories.) I enjoyed some of the Baba Yaga stories-- she's a Russian witch. My favorite is Beautiful Valissa (the name spelling varies).

Happy reading.

PS You might as well as, "Why so many English and Scottish ballads?" Again, the reason is that someone collected them fairly early and put them down in book form: Francis James Child. Many would probably be lost by now, or at least some of their variants would be; as it is, people still sing and refer to these ballads, such as Barbara Allen and The Unquiet Grave. In fact, Child's collection was so influential that some songs are referred to by the number he assigned them. Again, other people in other countries have ballads; there was a collection of Danish ballads that preceeded Chillds, for instance. His collection was just thorough and became popular.

Answer 2

This link provides part of the answer. http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1487
It would appear that fairy tales were promoted in Germany to give a feeling of national cohesion. It is, after all, a large country and with a number of regional divisions,so a common culture was seen as clearly a good thing. The Brothers Grimm began collecting folk tales around 1807, in response to a wave of awakened interest in German folklore that followed the publication of Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano's folksong collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Boy's Magic Horn"), 1805-8. By 1810 the Grimms produced a manuscript collection of several dozen tales, which they had recorded by inviting storytellers to their home and transcribing what they heard. Although it is often believed that they took their tales from peasants, many of their informants were middle-class or aristocratic, recounting tales they had heard from their servants, and several of the informants were of Huguenot ancestry and told tales French in origin. In 1812, the Brothers published a collection of 86 German fairy tales in a volume titled Kinder- und Hausmärchen ("Children's and Household Tales"). They published a second volume of 70 stories in 1814 ("1815" on the title page), which together make up the first edition of the collection, containing 156 stories. A second edition followed in 1819-22, expanded to 170 tales. Five more editions were issued during the Grimms' lifetimes, in which stories were added or subtracted, until the seventh edition of 1857 contained 211 tales. Many of the changes were made in light of unfavorable reviews, particularly those that objected that not all the tales were suitable for children, despite the title.Th ey were also criticized for being insufficiently German; this not only affected the tales they included, but their language as they changed "Fee" (fairy) to an enchantress or wise woman, every prince to a king's son, every princess to a king's daughter.(It has long been recognized that some of these later-added stories were derived from printed rather than oral sources.)

These editions, equipped with scholarly notes, were intended as serious works of folklore. The Brothers also published the Kleine Ausgabe or "small edition," containing a selection of 50 stories expressly designed for children (as opposed to the more formal Große Ausgabe or "large edition"). Ten printings of the "small edition" were issued between 1825 and 1858.

The German folklore tradition owes a great deal, therefore, to the meticulous and labour intensive work of these two brothers, both lawyers by profession. Without them, many of these stories might have been lost to posterity.

Answer 3

Most of the folklore that comes from Germany is meant to instill a fear into children. This make the children grow up with a fear of authority and they obey more of what their parents say.

This has changed from years ago.

Answer 4

hans christian anderson