Musäus, Johann Karl August (1735–87), one of the leading cultural figures at the Weimar court, published Volksmärchen der Deutschen (Folktales of the Germans) in five volumes between 1782 and 1786. The 14 tales include magical elements and embrace disparate genres. Despite their title, the tales are literary rather than ‘folk’ and many derive from non‐German sources. Musäus's playfully sophisticated literary style met the approval of his contemporary Christoph Martin Wieland, who noted that ‘all fairy tales did not have to be told in the childlike style of my Mother Goose’. Like the Grimms, Musäus excluded the fairy world and populated his tales with now‐traditional characters such as transformed animals, sorcerers, giants, animal bridegrooms, and wicked stepmothers.
Musäus personified his characters as cleverly as did Ludwig Bechstein, in a stylistically expansive text. One canny hero who understands fairy‐tale magic recognizes that talking animals must be creatures under an enchantment, and quickly marries all three of his daughters to beasts, who enrich him and eventually return to human shape. In one form or another, all of Musäus's tales explore love and the married state.
Claiming to be the first to rework German Volksmärchen, that is, fairy tales told by the people, Musäus stressed that the tales were all thoroughly native, transmitted orally through numberless generations. However, 9 of Musäus's 14 tales derive demonstrably from prior literary sources:
1. Basile, ‘Li tre ri anemale’ → d'Aulnoy, ‘La Belle au cheveux d'or’ → Musäus, ‘Bücher der Chronika der drei Schwestern’
4. Johannes Prätorius, Volksbuch → Musäus, ‘Rübezahl’
5. Perrault, ‘Peau d'âne’ (‘Donkey‐Skin’) + ‘La belle au bois dormant’ (‘Sleeping Beauty’) + Mme de Villeneuve, ‘Les Nayades’ → Musäus, ‘Nymphe des Brunnens’
6. Piccolomini, Historia Bohemica + Johannes Dubravius, Historia regni bohemiae → Musäus ‘Libussa’
7.
8. ‘Die Matrone von Ephesus’ → Musäus, ‘Liebestreue’
10. various French versions of ‘Riquet à la Houppe’ (Perrault, Bernard, Lheritier) → Musäus, ‘Ulrich mit dem Bühel’
12. Bodmer, Graf von Gleichen → [Volksbücher?] → Musäus, ‘Melechsala’
14. Erasmus Francisci, ‘Höllischer Proteus’ → Bürger, ‘Lenore’ → Musäus, ‘Die Entführung’
The most enlightening source about Musäus's fairy‐tale production comes from his own pen. To a correspondent he wrote that fairy tales were back in fashion and that he was therefore preparing a collection ‘that will bear the title, Fairy Tales of the Folk: a Reader for Big and Little Children (Volksmärchen, ein Lesebuch für grosse und kleine Kinder). For it I'm gathering the most hackneyed old wives' tales that I'm inflating and making ten times more magical than they originally were. My dear wife has high hopes that it will be a very lucrative product.’ Manfred Grätz, historian of the emergence of fairy tales in Germany, notes that Musäus used the word ‘Volksmärchen’ in the older sense of fanciful tales (Lügengeschichte) and that Musäus's purpose paralleled Perrault's, in that he wished to praise ancient virtues while depicting the medieval period as less simple than his romantic contemporaries wished to believe.
Musäus's collection, reprinted in 1787–8, 1795–8, and 1804–5, enjoyed a long popularity, which many contemporaries attributed to his humorous style. In 1845 it was translated into English as The Enchanted Knights.
Bibliography
- Grätz, Manfred, Das Märchen in der deutschen Aufklärung: Vom Feenmärchen zum Volksmärchen (1988).
- Klotz, Volker, Das europäische Kunstmärchen (1985).
- McGlathery, James M., ‘Magic and Desire from Perrault to Musaus: Some Examples’,
Eighteenth‐Century Life , 7.1 (October 1981). - Miller, Norbert (ed.), Johann Karl August Musäus. Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1976).
- Tismar, Jens, Kunstmärchen (1977).
— Ruth B. Bottigheimer
