Eye of the Goof

This excellent site features German children's stories from the 19th century, it got me to thinking about how much I loved reading Max und Moritz with my mother when I was a child. She also read to me from unabridged and unadulterated Brothers Grimm, Heinrich Hoffman, and Hans Christian Anderson collections. I really enjoyed how dark and macabre the original stories were, and the way that the child antagonists always suffered outrageous retribution for relatively trivial transgressions.

Of course, moral busybodies eventually decreed that these tales sent children the wrong message and the gruesome bits were excised to protect their supposedly delicate sensibilities. Happily, the original versions seem to be coming back into vogue.

When I lived in Northern Germany, I took several trips along the Märchenstraße (Fairy-tale Road), which takes you through the various cities and towns that formed the backdrop for the folk tales popularized by the Brothers Grimm and Baron Munchausen.