Till Eulenspiegel

For the Strauss tone poem, see Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.

The prankster Till Eulenspiegel, depicted with owl and mirror (Straßburg edition of 1515)

Till Eulenspiegel (German pronunciation: [tɪl ˈʔɔʏlənˌʃpiːɡəl], Low Saxon: Dyl Ulenspegel [dɪl ˈʔuːlnˌspeɪɡl̩]) was an impudent trickster figure originating in Middle Low German folklore. His tales were disseminated in popular printed editions narrating a string of lightly connected episodes that outlined his picaresque career, primarily in Germany, the Low Countries and France. He made his main entrance in English-speaking culture late in the nineteenth century as "Owlglass", but was first mentioned in English literature by Ben Jonson in his comedic play The Alchemist.

Origin and tradition

"General opinion now tends to regard Till Eulenspiegel as an entirely imaginary figure around whose name was gathered a cycle of tales popular in the Middle Ages," Ruth Michaelis-Jena observes^[1] "Yet legendary figures need a definite background to make them memorable and Till needed the reality of the Braunschweig landscape and real towns to which he could travel—Cologne, Rostock, Bremen and Marburg among them—and whose burghers become the victims of his pranks."

According to the tradition, Eulenspiegel was born in Kneitlingen near Brunswick around 1300. He travelled through the Holy Roman Empire, especially Northern Germany, but also the Low Countries, Bohemia, and Italy. His mobility as a Landfahrer ("vagrant") personifies the constitution and consciousness of the Late Middle Ages.

Since the early 19th century, many German scholars have made attempts to find historical evidence of Till Eulenspiegel's existence. In his 1980 book Till Eulenspiegel, historian Bernd Ulrich Hucker mentions that according to a contemporary legal register of the city of Brunswick one Till van Cletlinge ("Till from/of Kneitlingen") was incarcerated there in the year 1339, along with four of his accomplices, for highway robbery.^[2]

While he is unlikely to have been based on an historic person, by the sixteenth century, Eulenspiegel was said to have died in Mölln, near Lübeck, of the Black Death in 1350, according to a gravestone attributed to him there, which was noted by Fynes Moryson in his Itinerary, 1591.^[3] "Don't move this stone, let that be clear - Eulenspiegel's buried here^[4]" is written on the stone in Low German.

In the stories, he is presented as a trickster or fool who played practical jokes on his contemporaries, exposing vices at every turn, greed and folly, hypocrisy and foolishness. As Peter Carels notes, "The fulcrum of his wit in a large number of the tales is his literal interpretation of figurative language."^[5] In these stories, anything that can go wrong in communication, does go wrong. And it is not the exception that communication gives rise to complications; rather, it is the rule. As a model of communication, Till Eulenspiegel is the inherent, unpredictable factor of complication that can throw any communication, whether with oneself or others, into disarray. These irritations, amounting to conflicts, have the potential of effecting mental paradigm changes and increases in the level of consciousness, and in the end, of leading to truth. Although craftsmen are featured as the principal victims of his pranks, neither the nobility nor the pope are exempt from being fooled by him.

In the end, Eulenspiegel's pranks are not so much about the exposure of human weaknesses and malice, as much as the animus he embodies — the implicit breaking up and sublimation of a given status of consciousness, by means of its negation. A common theme to these stories is that of turning the prevailing mental horizon upside down, and unseating it with a higher one.^{[citation needed]}

The tales in print

Till Eulenspiegel in Mölln

Man dressed as Till Eulenspiegel at an event in Schöppenstedt

The two earliest printed editions,^[6] in Early New High German, "Ein kurtzweilig Lesen von Dyl Ulenspiegel, geboren uß dem Land zu Brunßwick, wie er sein leben volbracht hat …", are Johannes Grüninger's in Strassburg, 1510–11 and 1515.^[7] In spite of often-repeated suggestions to the effect "that the name 'Eulenspiegel' was used in tales of rogues and liars in Lower Saxony as early as 1400",^[8] previous references to a Till Eulenspiegel actually turn out to be surprisingly elusive, Paul Oppenheimer concludes.^[9] The authorship is attributed to Hermann Bote. Puns that do not work in High German indicate that the book was written in Low German first and translated into High German in order to find a larger audience, although more recent research throws this into question.

The literal translation of the High German name "Eulenspiegel" gives "owl mirror", two symbols that identify Till Eulenspiegel in crude popular woodcuts (illustration). However, the original Low German is believed to be ul'n Spegel, meaning "wipe the arse". In the eighteenth century, German satirists adopted episodes for social satire, and in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century versions of the tales are bowdlerized, to render them fit for children, who had come to be considered their chief natural audience, by expurgating their many scatological references.^[10] In the current Oppenheimer edition (see above) scatological stories abound, beginning with Till's early childhood (in which he rides behind his father and exposes his rear-end to the townspeople) and persisting until his death bed (where he tricks a priest into soiling his hands with feces).^[11]

Current popularity

The book has been translated, often in mutilated versions, into many languages. There are two museums in Germany featuring Till Eulenspiegel. One is located in the small town of Schöppenstedt in Lower Saxony, which is nearby his supposed birthplace. The other is located in the supposed place of his death, the city of Mölln in Schleswig-Holstein.

See also

• Hermann Bote: Eulenspiegel. (Auswahl aus tiefenpsychologischer Sicht). Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag 2009, ISBN 978-389821-981-5
• The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak, an 1867 novel by Charles De Coster
• Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, a tone poem by Richard Strauss, 1894–95, Op. 28.
• a 1916 ballet by the Ballets Russes, see Vaslav Nijinsky, later adapted by George Balanchine for Jerome Robbins at New York City Ballet
• a verse by Gerhart Hauptmann, titled Till Eulenspiegel (1927)
• Nasreddin, Medieval Middle Eastern literature has a character similar to Eulenspiegel
• Hershele Ostropoler, an early-19th-century Jewish prankster similar in character to Eulenspiegel
• Sly Peter, a Bulgarian and Macedonian character similar to Eulenspiegel
• Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie’s translation, "Master Tyll Owlglass: His Marvellous Adventures and Rare Conceits", published in London by George Routledge, 1859 (U.S. edition published in Boston by Ticknor and Fields, 1860).
• Translation

Notes

1. ^ Ruth Michaelis-Jena, "Eulenspiegel and Münchhausen: Two German Folk Heroes", Folklore 97.1 (1986:101-108) p. 102.
2. ^ Hucker, Bernd Ulrich (1980). Till Eulenspiegel: Beiträge zur Forschung, Brunswick: Stadtarchiv und Stadtbibliothek, 1980
3. ^ John A. Walz, "Fynes Moryson and the Tomb of Till Eulenspiegel" Modern Language Notes 42.7 (November 1927:465-466) p 465; Walz quotes Moryson's description of "a famous Jester Oulenspiegell (whom we call Owlyglasse)": "the towns-men yeerly keepe a feast for his memory, and yet show the apparell he was wont to weare." The earliest reference to the gravestone is of the mid-sixteenth century, in Riemar Kock's Lübscher Chronik. By the seventeenth century it was noted as "often renewed".
4. ^ “Disen Stein sol nieman erhaben. Hie stat Ulenspiegel begraben. Anno domini MCCCL jar” (Diesen Stein soll niemand erhaben, hier steht Eulenspiegel begraben; Eulenwelt - Eulen und Käuze: Till Eulenspiegel)
5. ^ Peter E. Carels, "Eulenspiegel and Company Visit the Eighteenth Century" Modern Language Studies 10.3 (Autumn 1980:3-11) p. 3.
6. ^ Fragmentary manuscripts of ca. 1510 were found by Honegger, and an almost complete manuscript of Grüninger's 1510-11 edition by Paul Ulrich hucker in 1975 (Paul Oppenheimer, Till Eulenspiegel: His Adventures" (1991), Introduction, p. xxix).
7. ^ The early editions have been translated by Paul Oppenheimer as A Pleasant Vintage of Till, Eulenspiegel (Wesleyan University Press) 1972, with introduction and critical apparatus; Oppenheimer, Till Eulenspiegel: His Adventures was published in the Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 1991
8. ^ Michaelis-Jena 1986:102.
9. ^ Oppenheimer 1991, Introduction, p. xxx.
10. ^ Carels 1980.
11. ^ Oppenheimer, Introduction

External links

• German translation of the 1510 book
• Till Eulenspiegel Museum
• Two example Eulenspiegel Stories translated to English among others
• Till Eulenspiegel the merry prankster by John M. Gaustad and Walt Vogdes
• German Coin Celebrates 500th Anniversary of Till Eulenspiegel