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Eulenspiegel and Münchhausen: Two German Folk Heroes

1986; Routledge; Volume: 97; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0015587x.1986.9716371

1469-8315

Ruth Michaelis-Jena,

Themes in Literature Analysis

In her introduction to the section on Jocular Tales in her monumental Dictionary of British Folk-Tales, Katharine Briggs wrote: 'They may be used either to repress and hold up to scorn undesirable behaviour, or as a retaliation of the underprivileged against their superiors in wealth or learning.' Her awareness of their deeper meaning, together with her acute sense of fun, led her to take an interest also in two famous German cycles of jocular tales, those centering on the trickster Till Eulenspiegel and the braggart romances of Baron von Miinchhausen. Both figures have become the focus for a whole canon of tales, and have fixed themselves firmly in the folk consciousness as their heroes. At first sight they are very different: one a shadowy figure, a rogue, a ne'er-do-well, playing tricks on the illustrious and the common folk alike; the other a landed gentleman, a distinguished soldier, eventually retiring to his estates where during convivial evenings he countered his fellow huntsmen's yarns with his own reminiscences, wildly heightened into the fantastic and unbelievable by his sparkling imagination. The baron was a very real person. The country house of the Miinchhausen family still stands in a beautiful part of the valley of the Weser. The historical truth of Till Eulenspiegel, though often claimed, has never been satisfactorily established. The name - in several variations - was common in the Brunswick region of Germany and to this day his tomb is shown at MSlln, not far from Liibeck, implying that if someody lies here, dead and buried, then he must, in fact, have existed. Till is said to have been born in the village of Kneitlingen about the end of the thirteenth century and to have died of the plague in M-lln in 1350. His father was allegedly a farmer or perhaps a cottager on a bigger farm, possibly on the estates of Till von Uetzen, Lord of the Manor in the nearby village of Amtleben. One of the earliest tales speaks of little Till's christening which was threefold: first in the font, then when his godmother slipped on a narrow bridge and let the baby drop from her arms into a muddy stream below, and finally in a basin of hot water when he was cleaned before being put into his cradle. All this happened on the way from Amtleben where the christening had been celebrated and Till von Uetzen had become the boy's godfather. In the early Volksbuch Eulenspiegel is introduced as a real person when the author states that about the year 1500 he set about to collect all existing stories about a cunning and artful lad, a farmer's son, who was remembered in his own country and abroad for the tricks he played. Editors and commentators have for long taken Eulenspiegel as a historic person. Only gradually doubt set in and questions were asked, reluctantly perhaps, since literary historian and reader alike found it easier to deal with a real rascal than the sophisticated creation of a rebel against society. Even now the idea lingers that the model for Eulenspiegel may well have lived at some time