Struwwelpeter

Struwwelpeter in a 1917 edition.

Der Struwwelpeter (1845) is a popular German children's book by Heinrich Hoffmann. It comprises ten illustrated and rhymed stories, mostly about children. Each has a clear moral that demonstrates the disastrous consequences of misbehavior in an exaggerated way. The title of the first story provides the title of the whole book. Literally translated, Struwwel-Peter means Shaggy-Peter.

History

As children's literature scholar Penni Cotton writes, Hoffmann wrote Struwwelpeter in reaction to the lack of good children's books. Intending to buy a picture book as a Christmas present for his three-year-old son, Hoffmann instead wrote and illustrated his own book.^[1] Hoffmann was persuaded by friends to publish the book anonymously as Lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder mit 15 schön kolorierten Tafeln für Kinder von 3–6 Jahren (Funny Stories and Whimsical Pictures with 15 Beautifully Coloured Panels for Children Aged 3 to 6) in 1845. It was not until the third edition in 1858 that the book was published under the title Struwwelpeter. The book became very popular among children throughout Europe, and, writes author and researcher Penni Cotton, the pictures and characters showed a great deal of originality and directness.^[1]

Struwwelpeter has been translated into several languages. The first English translation appeared in 1848. Mark Twain's English translation of the book is called "Slovenly Peter." A link to an English translation of the entire book is here.

In 2006, Fantagraphics Books published the first completely digital version of Struwwelpeter, reinterpreted and illustrated by Bob Staake.

Struwwelpeter was republished in English by Dover in 2010.^[2]

Stories

Nikolas, as he is about to dunk three boys in his inkstand. Illustration from a 1917 edition.

Struwwelpeter describes a boy who does not groom himself properly and is consequently unpopular.

In "Die Geschichte vom bösen Friederich" (The Story of Bad Frederick), a violent boy terrorizes animals and people. Eventually he is bitten by a dog, who goes on to eat the boy's sausages while he is bedridden.

In "Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug" (The Dreadful Story of the Matches), a girl plays with matches and burns to death.

In "Die Geschichte von den schwarzen Buben" (The Story of the Black Boys), Nikolas (that is, Saint Nicholas^[3]) catches three boys teasing a dark-skinned boy. To teach them a lesson, he dips the three boys in black ink, to make them even darker-skinned than the boy they'd teased.

"Die Geschichte von dem wilden Jäger" (The Story of the Wild Huntsman) is the only story not primarily focused on children. In it, a hare steals a hunter's musket and eyeglasses and begins to hunt the hunter. In the ensuing chaos, the hare's child is burned by hot coffee and the hunter falls into a well, presumably to his death.

In "Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher" (The Story of the Thumb-Sucker), a mother warns her son not to suck his thumbs. However, when she goes out of the house he resumes his thumb sucking, until a roving tailor appears and cuts off his thumbs with giant scissors.

"Die Geschichte vom Suppen-Kaspar" (The Story of the Soup-Kaspar) begins as Kaspar, a healthy, strong boy, proclaims that he will no longer eat his soup. Over the next five days he wastes away and dies.

In "Die Geschichte vom Zappel-Philipp" (The Story of the Fidgety Philip), a boy who won't sit still at dinner accidentally knocks all of the food onto the floor, to his parents' great displeasure.

"Die Geschichte von Hans Guck-in-die-Luft" (The Story of Johnny Head-in-Air) concerns a boy who habitually fails to watch where he's walking. One day he walks into a river; he is soon rescued, but his writing-book drifts away.

In "Die Geschichte vom fliegenden Robert" (The Story of the Flying Robert), a boy goes outside during a storm. The wind catches his umbrella and sends him to places unknown, and presumably to his doom.

Zappel-Philipp. Illustration from the 1845 edition.

Stage adaptations

Shockheaded Peter (1998) is a musical created by Julian Bleach, Anthony Cairns, Julian Crouch, Graeme Gilmour, Tamzin Griffin, Jo Pocock, Phelim McDermott, Michael Morris and The Tiger Lillies (Martyn Jacques, Adrian Huge and Adrian Stout). The production combines elements of pantomime and puppetry with musical versions of the poems with the songs generally following the text but with a somewhat darker tone. Whereas the children in the poems only sometimes die, in the musical they all do. Commissioned by the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds and the Lyric Hammersmith in West London, the show debuted in 1998 in Leeds before moving to London and subsequently to world tours.^[4]

Struwwelpeter (2004), is a work for narrator and orchestra was staged in the Athens Concert Hall as the main Christmas program of Kamerata Orchestra of Friends of Music. The music was written by Alexandros Mouzas and was commissioned by the Athens Concert Hall. The production ran for 8 sold-out performances.^[5]

Struwwelpeter – In English! (2006) was taken to the 60th Edinburgh Festival in August. The production used a variety of magic, mime, physical theatre, and black-comedy to recreate the tales. The show had a sell-out run and returned in 2007 for a second run of the sell out show. The show was directed and performed by Owen Daniel, Susannah Ashfield, Isobelle Miller, Alexandra Gillam and Perran Crosley.

Devilish Children and the Civilizing Process (2010) is a stage play adapted, produced, directed and performed by the Dream Theatre Company of Chicago.^[6] It is based on several of the stories from Der Struwwelpeter, including "The Story of Cruel Frederick", "The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches" and "The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb". It also includes an adaption of "Cry Baby", from Slovenly Betsy, another children's book written by Heinrich Hoffmann and illustrated by Walter Hayn, in the spirit of Struwwelpeter; it was published in 1917 for an American audience.^[7] It is a liberal adaption written by Dream Theatre Company's co-founder and Artistic Director Jeremy Menekseoglu. It was originally performed for Halloween (a theatre tradition). The play is a bit more ghoulish than the original poems. It places a misbehaving 3-year-old Karl, in a 19th century boarding school, where he will be "taught to be civilized" by the "Devilish Children" as they go through "a series of grotesque cautionary tales in which bad children get far worse than they deserve".^[8] The original Chicago performance featured Annelise Lawson, Chad Sheveland, Judith Lesser, Bil Gaines, Rachel Martindale, Mishelle Apalategui, Anna Menekseoglu and Jeremy Menekseoglu; was designed by Anna Weiler, Giau Truong and Jeremy Menekseoglu; and staged managed by Kristi Bogart.

Film Adaptations

Little Suck-a-Thumb (1992), is a psychosexual interpretation of the infamous cautionary tale from Heinrich Hoffman's storybook. The short film by writer/director David Kaplan stars Cork Hubbert (The Ballad of the Sad Café), Evelyn Solann, and Jim Hilbert as the Great Tall Scissorman. It won awards at the 1992 Chicago Film Festival, the 1992 Cork Film Festival, and the 1993 Grenoble Film Festival. It was also awarded 2nd place at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts annual film festival and was screened as an Official Selection at the 1992 Munich International Festival of Film Schools. It is collected with 2 other short films on the DVD Little Red Riding Hood and Other Stories.^[9]

Influence and references

M.J. Trow in "The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade" (ISBN 978-0895263438) recreates each of the cautionary tales as the work of a serial killer.

Struwwelpeter Soup rim bowl featuring the story of fidgety Phillip

Stamp with two characters, issued on Hoffman's 200th birthday

The comic book writer Grant Morrison drew inspiration from Struwwelpeter during his tenure on the DC comic Doom Patrol when inventing several enemy monsters. The Tailor from The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb provided inspiration for the Scissormen in issues #19 to #22, where Struwwelpeter is quoted directly^{[citation needed]}, and apparitions named The Inky Boys and Flying Robert appear in #25, along with a special cameo appearance by a Scissorman.

W. H. Auden refers to the Scissor-Man in his 1930's poem "The Witnesses" (also known as "The Two"):

And now with sudden swift emergence
Come the women in dark glasses, the humpbacked surgeons
And the Scissor Man.

Adolf Hitler was parodied as a Struwwelpeter caricature in 1941 in a book called Struwwelhitler, published in Britain under the pseudonym Dr. Schrecklichkeit (Dr. Horrors).

The Story of Soup-Kaspar is parodied in Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking (1945), with a tall story about a Chinese boy named Peter who refuses to eat a swallow's nest served to him by his father, and dies of starvation five months later.

American composer Michael Schelle composed a song cycle based on the Struwwelpeter stories for tenor singer and piano in 1991. He revised the piece for tenor and chamber ensemble in 2006.

The German-American character Dwight Schrute reads Struwwelpeter to a group of children on a 2006 episode of The Office.

In the Family Guy episode, Business Guy, a cutaway gag retells the story of the thumb sucker, however instead of the tailor, it is the boy's mother who cuts off the boy's thumbs.

Jasper Fforde's novel The Fourth Bear features a town heavily influenced by "cautionary tales" based on stories from Struwwelpeter.

In 2005, the German band Rammstein released "Hilf mir" on the album "Rosenrot", a song inspired by "Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug".

'Snip Snap' by 1980s Yugoslavian band Videosex uses as its lyrics an English version of 'Little Suck a Thumb'

Paulinchen, the young girl burned to death, was featured in campaign posters of the Christian Democratic Union Party in German elections in the 1990's. Playing up on her green dress and red bows and shoes, voters were warned "keine rot-grünen Experimente!" ("no red-green experiments!"), the implication being that a coalition of the SPD (Social Democrats, who traditionally use red in their campaign material) and Greens would entail a disastrous outcome for Germany.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Cotton, Penni (2000). Picture Books Sans Frontières. Trentham Books. pp. 11. ISBN 1 85856 183 3. 
2. ^ http://www.tnr.com/book/review/harsh-lesson
3. ^ Martina Eberspächer 2002. Der Weihnachtsmann: Zur Entstehung einer Bildtradition in Aufklärung und Romantik, p. 74 ff., in German; also in Mark Twain's translation Slovenly Peter "Nikolas" is translated as "Saint Nicholas".
4. ^ Elyse Sommer (2005). "Shockheaded Peter Makes a Comeback". CurtainUp. http://www.curtainup.com/shockheadedpeterny.html#Original%20Shockheaded%20Peter%20Review. Retrieved 2009-02-19. 
5. ^ "Struwwelpeter: A musical tale based upon the work of Eric Hoffman". Alexandros Mouzas. 2004. http://www.mouzas.com/struwwelpeter.html. Retrieved 2009-02-19. 
6. ^ "Dream Theatre Company - Upcoming/Current Production: Devilish Children and the Civilizing Process". Dream Theatre. 2010. http://www.dreamtheatrecompany.com/main/index.html. Retrieved 2010-11-20. 
7. ^ Heinrich Hoffmann (2006). "Slovenly Betsy". Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19915. Retrieved 2010-11-20. 
8. ^ "The Devilish Children and the Civilizing Process: Dream Theatre, Theater & Performance, Chic". Chicago Reader. 2010. http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-devilish-children-and-the-civilizing-process/Event?oid=2601898. Retrieved 2010-11-20. 
9. ^ "Little Suck-a-Thumb: A cautionary tale". Malaprop Productions. 2009. http://www.kaplanworks.com/films.html. Retrieved 2009-05-14. 

Further reading

• Ashton, Susanna M.; Petersen, Amy Jean (Spring 1995). "'Fetching the Jingle Along' – Mark Twain's Slovenly Peter". The Children's Literature Association Quarterly 20 (1): 36–41. 

External links

• DerStruwwelpeter.com
• Struwwelpeter: Merry Tales and Funny Pictures at Project Gutenberg
• Struwwelpeter-Museum in Frankfurt, Germany (German)