7.7 Grimm — «Hänsel und Gretel» — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the opening of the Grimms' Hänsel und Grethel in the brothers' own words, as printed in 1857. Recognise the old spellings of the nineteenth century and convert them to modern German: Thränen is Tränen , gieng is ging . Follow fairy-tale narration in the simple past, with sprach for said and speech run into the sentence. Recognise the diminutives -chen and -lein and a few old idioms. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the German aloud; all of them come back below. German English Wie er sich nun Abends im Bette Gedanken machte und sich vor Sorgen herum wälzte, seufzte er. As he lay in bed in the evening, thinking and tossing about with worry, he sighed. Wie können wir unsere armen Kinder ernähren, da wir für uns selbst nichts mehr haben? How can we feed our poor children when we have nothing left for ourselves? Da schien der Mond ganz helle, und die weißen Kieselsteine, die vor dem Haus lagen, glänzten wie lauter Batzen. The moon was shining brightly, and the white pebbles that lay in front of the house gleamed like so many silver coins. Das Reisig ward angezündet, und als die Flamme recht hoch brannte The brushwood was lit, and when the flame was burning really high Es war aber nicht die Holzaxt, es war ein Ast, den er an einen dürren Baum gebunden hatte und den der Wind hin und her schlug. But it was not the axe; it was a branch that he had tied to a dead tree and that the wind knocked to and fro. Als sie so lange gesessen hatten, fielen ihnen die Augen vor Müdigkeit zu. When they had sat there so long, their eyes closed with tiredness. Prerequisites : 7.6 — you need the simple past of strong verbs from 3.10 Verbs , the pluperfect from 3.11 Verbs , and the reading strategy of 7.6 Reading : facts first, then the grammar. About this text Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected and edited the Kinder- und Hausmärchen , the Children's and Household Tales , from 1812 to 1857. With each edition Wilhelm reworked the language, making it smoother and more like a story told aloud. The text here is from the seventh edition of 1857, the last that Wilhelm prepared, which is the version most later editions follow. It is in the public domain, and it is taken from the transcription in the German Wikisource, checked there against the printed page. This lesson gives the first part of the tale, 843 words in five paragraphs: the famine, the stepmother's plan, Hänsel 's white pebbles, the first day in the forest and the return home. The rest of the story, with the second abandonment and the witch's house, follows the same pattern and is left for you to read in the same source when you are ready. Nothing has been modernised. The spelling is that of 1857, which differs from today's in a few regular ways, and the language has some old forms and idioms. These are explained below, and the list is short. Once you have learned it, you can read almost any German text of the nineteenth century. Old spellings Four changes cover nearly every unfamiliar spelling in the text. th where today there is t . Theuerung, Thränen, thue, Thiere, Thür, that are today's Teuerung, Tränen, tue, Tiere, Tür, tat . The h was never pronounced; it was dropped in the spelling reform of 1901. ie in some past forms. gieng and fieng are ging and fing . ß after a short vowel. daß is today's dass ; the reform of 1996 changed ß to ss after a short vowel. Capitals and small letters. Abends and Morgen as adverbs are today's abends and morgen . The name itself is spelled Grethel in 1857; modern editions write Gretel . Fairy-tale German The simple past, and sprach . The tale is told in the simple past from beginning to end: wohnte, hatte, kam, weinte, schlich, schien, gab . For said , the Grimms use sprach , the past of sprechen , as often as sagte . Speech is often run on after the verb without a colon, and it begins with a small letter: sprach zu Hänsel „nun ists um uns geschehen.“ ward . Das Reisig ward angezündet : ward is an old form of wurde , here in the passive, was lit . Contractions. Spoken forms are written as one word: ists is ist es , ichs is ich es , eßts is esst es . The old dative -e . Masculine and neuter nouns of one syllable often take an -e in the dative: vor einem großen Walde , im Bette , im Walde . Today it survives mainly in fixed phrases such as zu Hause and im Grunde , and as an old-fashioned touch in formal writing. Diminutives. The tale is full of small things: Bübchen, Stückchen, Kätzchen, Weilchen, Schwesterchen with -chen , and Röcklein, Stücklein with the older southern -lein . All of them are neuter, whatever the gender of the base word. Old idioms. A few phrases need a gloss. wenig zu beißen und zu brechen means little to eat . wir sind sie los is we are rid of them . Hungers sterben , with an old genitive, is to die of hunger . die armen Kinder dauern mich is I feel sorry for the poor children , an old use of dauern that you will meet in older texts. Batzen were coins. Reading it a second time, paragraph by paragraph Paragraph 1 sets the scene and gives the parents' conversation in bed. Notice how the stepmother's plan is laid out in calm, practical steps, and how the father's objection is answered with brutal logic. The paragraph ends with the father's weakness: he agrees, but he pities the children. Paragraph 2 is Hänsel 's night: the children have overheard, Grethel cries, Hänsel slips out. The moonlight on the white pebbles is the image the whole first half turns on. Paragraph 3 is the walk into the forest, with Hänsel 's excuse about the white cat and the stepmother's answer. Look for the pluperfect at the end: Hänsel aber hatte nicht nach dem Kätzchen gesehen , telling us what he had really been doing. Paragraphs 4–5 are the forest and the way home. The sound of the axe that is really a branch in the wind is one of the tale's small, cruel details. The ending turns on two reactions: the stepmother's false scolding, and the father's relief. Full translation An English tra