I recently read a book about Eva Braun, Hitler's girlfriend
which talked quite a bit about German fairy tales. The author's idea was that the viciousness of German children's
stories had a part in the attitudes of the German people during WWI and WWII.
I don't know about that.
I wasn't there, and I'm not German.
What I do know is that my father (who had some German ancestors, so I
guess I'm sort of German?) was thrilled when he came into possession of an
archival-quality copy of Grimm's fairy tales.
He settled us kids around and read us Cinderella. Dad was a great story teller. He pitched his voice for drama, used funny
voices, and everything.
I went to bed that night and screamed every time I fell
asleep. I had visions of the evil step
sisters bleeding and mutilated, because in the original story, one sister cut
off her toes to get her foot into the glass slipper, and one cut off her
heel. Even though my young self had a
problem imagining how to cut off a heel, I understood cut off toes easily
enough. Screams rang through the
night. Screams kept my family awake for
two weeks. Apparently, my German
ancestry is too diluted for me to handle the brothers Grimm -- though
sufficient for a book burning. After two
weeks of night terrors, Dad reluctantly built a fire in the back yard and let me
toss the horrible book into the flames.
My nightmares stopped.
I was given a Dr. Seuss album, a record -- you know, that
object with magically recorded sounds in the dark ages before CDs, DVDs, and
youtube. I sat on the floor, with my
eyes wide open and cheeks pink with the thrill of story time. I also owned a Yertle the Turtle book which
I read in sync with the magical voice coming out of the spinning machine. Clearly, Dr. Seuss understood how to talk to
children better than the Grimms.
I've pondered the Eva Braun author's theory about German
fairy tales stressing obedience at the threat of dire punishments. She might be right that stories and
attitudes made for a militant society, but I'm glad I grew up in a time of Dr.
Seuss and Yertle the Turtle.
The story in brief, is that Yertle the Turtle was the king
of all the turtles. He wanted to see
farther than his pond, so he made the other turtles stack themselves up and he
climbed on top for a better view. This
was pretty punishing for Mack on the bottom of the pile, who politely
complained. Mack burped and the pile
toppled...
"And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he,
Is King of the Mud.
That is all he can see.
And the turtles, of course... all the turtles are free
As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be."
Did you know Dr. Seuss wrote this about Hitler? I didn't either. Seems like he could've written for some of the people alive
today. Maybe we should do a fundraiser
and send copies of the book to some of these people?
Oh, right. We have
youtube now. Watch it here.
