Brother and Sister
Brother and Sister is a fairy tale (ATU 450). It is in the Children's and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm in place 11 (KHM 11).
Content
A witch with its own ugly daughter treated her two step-children, a boy and a girl, so poor that see no other way out but to flee. When the stepmother noticed the flight, they occupied all wells and springs in the forest with a Polymorph spell. At the third source is " little brother " no longer resist his thirst and is transformed into a deer. Brother and sister live a long time together in a forest house. In a hunting the deer is injured by royal hunters, so a hunter can follow the deer, discovered the House and the Royal reports the incident. The king inflamed with love for the girl, it takes along with the deer to his castle and marries " little sister ". The witch and her ugly daughter to hear about it, are consumed by jealousy and meditate on it, to corrupt the young queen. After " sister " has been delivered of a boy, the witch turns into its chamber woman persuaded " little sister " to a bathroom and closes the door with her daughter from.
" But in the bath room they had made a hellish fire that the beautiful young Queen had soon suffocated. "
The daughter of the witch sets out to be false queen to bed. At midnight noticed the nurse, as the door opens and the right queen dumb looks after the child and the deer. This is repeated every night. After some time, little sister begins to speak: " What does my child? What makes my deer? Now I come twice and then never more. " The nurse reported it immediately to the king, but does not dare the next night to speak to his wife. In the third and last time they said the king at last.
" And she answered, 'Yes, I am your dear wife ,' and had received at the moment by God's grace life again, became fresh, rosy and healthy.. "
The tale ends with the unmasking and condemning the witch and her daughter. The subsidiary will be led into the forest, where she is devoured by wild animals, the Witch, however, suffers death by fire. Only when she crumbles to ashes, little brother is redeemed.
Special
The sister is described as a devout, pious girl:
"Thus saith the sister God and our hearts are weeping together! "
"In the evening, when the sister was tired and had said her prayer, [ ... ] "
Variants
See KHM 141 The lamb and the little fish
In one of Russia handed by the local collectors of fairy tales Afanasyev variant of the fairy tale siblings Alyonushka and Ivanushka hot ( so is the local name of the fairy tale ). Here you can drink the brother of a hoof print and turns instead into a deer in a goat. Even the little sister does not marry a king, but only a certain unspecified "normal" man, but is also happy with this until the witch tries to destroy the new happiness. In this version, the little brother is redeemed with the punishment of the witch. The own daughter of the witch comes but not before.
Interpretation
Eugen Drewermann interprets the theme of the fairy tale as "strong anxiety-ridden development of a girl to wife and mother." According to Bruno Bettelheim it comes to the banishment of antisocial or animalistic tendencies in the form of the witch or the wild animals. Sis represents the ego and super-ego and little brother can slow It - printing to sublimation as a tame animal. It also provides otherwise for both, the garter means personal bond, but loud call of instinct reduces the force of rational control. His life crisis is the departure from home, their starting your own family, what is each accented by three fold repetition. Wilhelm Salber sees a morphology of the movement of our life cultures in a self-regulation between overturning and arrangements.
Others see the focus of the tale more in love between siblings, and in part to the extent that history to insinuate incest as a central deep psychological issue.
Movies
- Brother and sister, theatrical release BRD December 26, 1953, Director: Walter Oehmichen and Hubert Schonger
- Gurimu Meisaku Gekijo, Japanese cartoon series in 1987 Episode 36: little brother and sister
- SimsalaGrimm, German animated series 1999 Season 1, Episode 13: Brother and Sister
- Brother and sister, television production in 2008, directed by Wolfgang Eissler
Music
- The composer and lyricist Roland Zoss set to music in 2006 brother and sister in the Swiss dialect Tale Series Liedermärli.
Fine Arts
- Limestone sculpture brother and sister of the sculptor Katharina Szelinski - Singer at Märchenbrunnen in Schulenburg Park in Berlin- Neukölln, 1970
- Sculpture brother and sister on the fairy tale fountain in the public park Friedrichshain
- A manga was published in 2012 by Inga Steinmetz.
Text output
- Russian version Alyonushka and Ivanushka