Cannibalism & Witchcraft: The True Story of "Hansel and Gretel"

most European folk tales are pretty depraved by modern standards Hansel and Gretel is no exception the original story deals with cannibalism child murder and Witchcraft it's pretty bizarre kind of makes you wonder why would this stuff be in a children's story So to that is also pretty crazy cannibalism child murder witchcraft were not that rare when the story was written I know it's hard to believe but in medieval times Germans were eating their kids and massacring thousands of people in deadly bloodthirsty witch hunts the crazy period of time that most people just kind of forgot about and indeed what most people don't know is that Hansel and Gretel hides a very dark and very violent true story we'll get to that in a second but first let's talk about The Brothers Grimm [Music] the brothers Grim were German academics who together collected and published folklore during their youth Napoleon successfully invaded Germany and fragmented the country The Brothers Grimm saw this as a huge threat to the future of German culture so they started collecting fairy tales to preserve As Much German literature as they could for future Generations Brothers Grimm's intended audience was not children in fact but fellow Scholars so perhaps that's one reason they weren't shy about including violent topics in their stories anyways the two brothers dedicated their lives to collecting as many folk tales as they could find among the hundreds maybe thousands they found was Hansel and Gretel Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm originally sourced the story from a woman named dortchen field who would later become wilhelm's wife over the years the Grims would make a number of alterations to this story motivations Aesthetics and even some core messages would shift and really become more Christian but the bones of the story remain the same for that reason it's relatively easy to see what circumstances led to the creation of Hansel and Gretel now over the years there have been dozens maybe even hundreds of versions of this Tale so to keep us all in the same place it's important that I recap the original Grim published version in a second I will give you the time code to skip this part since you probably already know the story however there are some details in this version that may not be in the version you know so you may want to listen anyways but if not go to this time a family in Germany has run out of food and the children are now starving the mother convinces the father to abandon their children in the deepest darkest part of the forest there she says the children will be killed by wild animals she tells her husband it would be better for them to die this way than to starve to death reluctantly the father agrees but the sun Hansel overhears their entire conversation the next morning the parents lead Hansel and his sister Gretel Into the Woods during the walk console secretly leaves a trail of Pebbles back to their home family arrives in the forest and the parents tell Hansel and Gretel to make a fire parents leave saying they're going to find more firewood Darkness Falls and the parents never return at night under Moonlight Hansel and Gretel follow the Pebbles back to their home the father is elated when they arrive but the mother is furious and disappointed food soon runs out again and the mother insists again that the kids should be abandoned so the parents take Hansel and Gretel into the woods this time Hansel makes another Trail but with breadcrumbs however by the time the parents abandoned the kids birds have eaten hansels breadcrumb Trail for three days Hansel and Gretel wander aimlessly through the forest eventually they find a home made out of bread and Cake starving children begin eating the home when a little old woman comes out and invites them inside she feeds them candy cake and sweets all evening until they fall asleep but of course she turns out to be a witch she built the house to lure in children and eat them the witch locks Hansel up in a chicken coop forces his sister to do chores which include force-feeding Hansel to fatten him up eventually Gretel asks the witch to check on a piece of bread baking in the oven when the witch checks on the bread Gretel pushes her in the oven and slams the door shut which burns alive screaming while she dies in the oven Hansel and Gretel steal her jewels and run away eventually they find their home and their father they give him the riches and the family is now wealthy it is then revealed that while the children were gone their mother died [Music] child abandonment in cannibalism are probably the most bizarre parts of this story they're also the most true in the early 1300s agriculture was spreading across Europe and food was easier to get than ever so people started having more kids in the population exploded then in 1315 there's actually a mini ice age and huge amounts of rain swept across Europe killing and spoiling all the newly planted crops this sudden lack of food left much of the new European population starving the prices of important Staples like oats salt and wheat sword so even if people could find these Foods they couldn't afford them a lot of people died and impoverished families had to find ways to cope Hansel and Gretel the mother abandons her children in the forest this was not altogether rare during the Great Famine families knew that their children were going to starve to death by abandoning them perhaps the children would have some chance at life or at least a more merciful death but for these families there was another option too Hansel and Gretel the witch is hell-bent on eating the children indeed in some extreme cases starving families resorted to cannibalism during the Great Famine the famine was so serious that either you sacrifice a child or your entire family dies for some the decision was clear Hansel and Gretel was recorded in the 1800s by The Brothers Grimm but this story was likely first written in the 1300s just after the famine these real-life events almost certainly inspired the story but as Folk Tales get passed on and retold to kind of pick up other elements witches like the one in Hansel and Gretel are a staple of well virtually all folklore from around the world but specifically in Germany the Middle Ages saw one of the largest and deadliest witch trials in history after the Great Famine many people wanted someone to blame for the death and destruction so the heavily Christian region chose witches for politicians it was an easy sell they could be absorbed of any responsibility and keep their positions working class meanwhile had somewhere to place the blame German witch hunts were truly horrendous generally if a woman was old and single people thought she was a witch the law stated that upon being charged with witchcraft not convicted but charged women were to be tortured and imprisoned of course many of the women charged were then burned at the stake during this time courts executed around 3 200 people in Southwestern Germany they were ruthless in one instance a court ordered the massacre of two entire villages to purge the area of alleged witchcraft no one was safe men women and children could all be found guilty of witchcraft a 90 year old priest was sentenced to death for being a witch altogether around 50 children under the age of 12 were executed for witchcraft things got really out of hand clearly eventually politicians were just accusing one another of Witchcraft to gain power lower class people with a grudge against the elite hurdled accusations upwards often resulting in executions so perhaps it's no surprise that so much of German folklore Hansel and Gretel included centers around defeating evil witches after all that's just what people were trying to do at the time most modern tellings of the story the mother actually becomes the stepmother throughout European folklore and specifically the Grimm Stories the evil stepmother is a pretty common Trope no one is really sure why it could be said that the brothers Grim didn't want to frighten children with tales of evil mothers but again the brothers didn't write these stories for kids instead they were just meant to serve as a record of German culture so the evil stepmother probably comes from two places first a desire to preserve the Purity and sanctity of motherhood and second just social reality women often died in childbirth at the time so stepmothers were just way more common than they are today perhaps the stepmother served in these stories is a foil to The Virtuous birth mother she was everything that a biological mother should not be cruel unloving villainous interestingly Hansel and gretel's stepmother or mother dies when they kill the witch a shyamalan-esque interpretation would tell us that the mother and the witch are the same person this feels unlikely more likely they both represent some form of evil in some form of then normal sexism only with the deaths of the wicked women can the children return to the safety of their patriarchal home [Music] with all that said there's really very little about Hansel and Gretel that is super unique it's hard to know whether elements of this tale spread through Europe or if Hansel and Gretel picked up pieces from other stories but the DNA of Hansel and Gretel can be found all throughout European folklore in the Italian tale nanilo e nanella an evil stepmother abandons her children in the woods the father leaves a trail of oats for the kids though the trail is eaten by a donkey there's also the French tail finette sandron in this story a king and queen abandoned their children in the forest one of the daughters uses a piece of thread to create a trail back home before they are abandoned again the kids end up in the Hutt of an ogre and a hag one of the daughters tricks the ogre into getting in the oven before she decapitates the hag there's also a tale called little Thumb in this story some children are again abandoned in the woods and find themselves in the home of an evil drunken ogre and his ogre daughters the ogre intends on eating the lost children but kids trick him into murdering his own daughters setting the lost kids free so just a few examples there are literally dozens more stories share plots and themes with Hansel and Gretel [Music] ultimately Hansel and Gretel is not a true story not really but it does reveal truths about the time and culture in which it was written its truths aren't always nice but it certainly can be interesting

Channel: Horses

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Id: 5cmsVRR5bFI

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2023