Märchen von Höllen & Teufeln

by Sigrid Früh, Wilhelm Solms

Der Teufel als Personifizierung des Bösen ist eine uralte Figur im Volksmärchen. Seine Faszination ist bis heute ungebrochen: Man denke nur an das "Horror"-Genre der modernen populären Literatur. Das Besondere an dieser Sammlung ist die Vielfalt bei Gestalt und Funktion der Höllen und Teufel.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Märchen von Höllen & Teufeln is a both engaging and enlightening, as well as thought provoking collection of mostly European folk and fairy tales featuring devils and demons as its main thematics, and indeed I do very much appreciate that in Märchen von Höllen & Teufeln editors and compilers Sigrid Früh and Wilhelm Solms have included both positive and negative offerings, that they are also presenting tales of humour (of cleverly outsmarting the Devil, or a demon) and even quite a number of stories featuring satatnic-like entities who are actually helpful and supportive, alongside of the standard devils as evil, as the root of all evil fare. And interestingly enough, even in a number of the standard "demonic devil" types of presented tales, while the satanic entities are most definitely negatively and even with horror conceptualised, they are also often seen, and they actually do generally consider themselves as God's punishment, as castigation for hard-hearted merchants and noblemen who willfully and often with pleasure cheat their customers or abuse and pillage their subjects (in other words, the demons, the Devil are actually in many of these tales portrayed as working in some manner for God, as punishing the wicked). An informative and engaging afterword, as well as detailed bibliographies appreciatively increase the academic and folkloric value of Märchen von Höllen & Teufeln (and while I certainly do think that at least some of the stories featured in this collection could easily and readily be read with and to children, Märchen von Höllen und Teufeln is for all intents and purposes not really a children's book, but more a collection of thematic folk and fairy tales for interested adults). Highly recommended, but as this collection is penned entirety in German, a decent amount of language fluency is definitely an asset if not a requirement.