The True History of Hansel & Gretel | Fairy Tales with Jen

hi everyone welcome to a minisode of fairy tales with Jen fairy tales with Jen is a series where I dissect a particular fairy tale looking at how it's appeared in different cultures around the world I enjoy thinking about fairy tales as these living breathing things that we have birthed into existence and nurtured over time and occasionally these fairy tales are thought to have been inspired in part by real-life events which is particularly fascinating and calling this one in minisode one because it's going to be short and two because I'm going to be talking about Hansel and Gretel but some of you may remember I've already made a video about the history of Hansel and Gretel so this is like a PS and a don where I'm going to talk about some true historical facts that I find particularly intriguing and interesting and wonderful and I want to tell you about them so grab a cup of tea and pull up a seat in my original Hansel and Gretel video which is also linked in the description box down below I talked about the different variations on the tale and I also mentioned that it's heavily inspired by the great famine of Europe in the 1300s where many parents were forced to abandon their children in churches and in forests because they couldn't afford to feed them but today I'm going to talk to you about someone else - oh and PS make sure you listen until the end so we all know the rough story of Hansel and Gretel it's about a brother and a sister they have a wicked mother / stepmother and a father who is persuaded by this wicked mother / stepmother to abandon Hansel and Gretel in the woods Hansel and Gretel then stumble across a house made of gingerbread inside as a witch she says she'll feed them that's true but only because she wants to feed them up in order to cook them she locks them in a cage and force feeds them Hansel and Gretel outsmart the witch push her into an oven and run back home whereupon they discover that their mother / stepmother has died and they live with their father happily ever after so in 1962 a German school teacher called George Asik who was fascinated by the tale of Hansel and Gretel decided to do some research into its true history because he's been hearing rumors he was drawn to a specific part of Germany called space art where he'd spent a lot of the Second World War the locals there called their local forest witches would and that intrigued him so he decided to camp out in witch's wood and scour the area and after few weeks he stumbled across a cottage there a cottage that was mostly destroyed and burnt down to the ground inside this cottage he discovered full ovens and inside one of these ovens he found the bones of a woman excited and slightly perturbed by this discovery he did some more exploration of the cottage and found a secret compartment in one of the stone walls and behind it inside was a recipe scrawled on a piece of paper for Gingerbread this recipe was written in a dialect specific to a town called Verna greater so he went to this town to try and investigate further to look at their records and in the town's historical records he stumbled across a manuscript called the Berner Grodin manuscript and in this he found out about a woman called Katherina Katherina Schroeder oon was born in 1618 and she became famous for her brilliant gingerbread cookies she made them for Abbey's she toured around southern Germany's local markets selling them and when she was in Nuremberg she came face-to-face with a baker called hands Metzler who was not very happy that Katharina was making this brilliant gingerbread which was outselling his he asked her for the recipe thinking it would be fair considering she wasn't local to the area he could make this gingerbread too and she could go back to where she was from and make it over there and not steal his business Katharina said no it's my secret recipe and you can't have it hands wasn't very happy about this but concealed it and instead pursued her asking for her hand in marriage thinking if she married him she couldn't keep the secret any longer Katharina was smarter than that though she refused to marry hands and went back to her hometown of Verna grata hands was furious about this and so went the local court and said listen up everyone I know a woman called Katharina and she's a witch he argued that she couldn't possibly make such a yummy gingerbread without the use of magic so poor Katharina was dragged back to Nuremberg where she was put on trial for being a witch it was the 1600s however Katharina in a rare moment of sanity was found innocent and let go she decided she couldn't be the face of her company anymore so didn't want to go back to Verna crota she decided to set up in a small house in the middle of the woods in space art where she would make her gingerbread in peace and the fools would take it away from that and sell it for her therefore that forest became known as witch's forest has Metzler however wasn't happy to just let Katharina quietly make her gingerbread in the middle of a forest he wanted that recipe and he was going to get it so Hans Metzler and his younger sister gret decided to go to this forest in the middle of the woods in spessard where they viciously murdered Katharina and pushed her into an oven they ransacked the place but they didn't find the secret compartment with the recipe inside so instead they had to take all of the gingerbread that they could find they took it back home where they were arrested and tried for the murder of Katharina but they said Katharina was a man-eating witch which apparently passes for evidence in court so they were let go and they went on to dissect these pieces of gingerbread to try and make the recipe from those they made good gingerbread but not as good as Katharina and they lived until the 1660s when they died very wealthy but slightly mad it's a thrilling story George also claimed he believed that the Brothers Grimm knew about the historical context behind the tale of Hansel and Gretel or rather the tale of hands Metzler and his sister gret but had decided to change it when they came to write it down they made the witch be the evil person because everyone loves an evil witch and they made the adults children and innocent because that was more Christian however there is just one slight problem George Asik doesn't exist George also is a creation of a satirist called hands Traxler who was born in germany in 1929 hands is obsessed with the history of fairy tales and how word of mouth can turn a tale into legend so he is playing with the very make up of fairy tales themselves has Traxler or George or sex but called the true history of Hansel and Gretel has been translated and in this translation the satire has been lost or perhaps I should say the satire is so good that in many places you can find this story recorded as fact in fact the University in Japan so loved this book they said they wanted to award a second prize for uncovering the true history of this fairy tale and when they found out our sake wasn't real they threatened trakzer with fraud all of these things add up to make me love this fairy tale even more I would love to know you think in the comments section down below in the next episode of fairy tales with Jen I think I'm gonna be dissecting the history of Bluebeard I also want to do a little episode where I talk about three of my favorite lesser-known fairy tales so that's more like story time with Jen's so those will both be coming up soon in the meantime you can check out previous episodes which are linked down below if you would like to purchase my ship story collection the beginning of the world in the middle of the night which is in part inspired by fairy tale I'll link it down below if you're new please do subscribe I hope you're having a great week and I'll speak to you very soon lots of pictures up [Music]

Channel: Jen Campbell

Views: 11,463

Rating: 4.9691515 out of 5

Keywords: jen campbell, fairy tales with jen, hansel and gretel, Hans Metzler, Katharina Schraderin, Georg Ossegg, Hans Traxler

Id: 7VQ6xchEAQY

Length: 7min 31sec (451 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 24 2018