Sämtliche Märchen

by Ludwig Bechstein, Walter Scherf, Ludwig Richter

Genres: Fantasy

780 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1857

About the author

Ludwig Bechstein was a German writer and collector of folk fairy tales.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Now this here tome, which is aptly titled Sämtliche Märchen contains all four of Ludwig Bechstein's fairy tale books in one gigantic mega-volume of more than 800 pages. Largely overshadowed now by the Brothers Grimm, Ludwig Bechstein's collections were actually very popular when first published (in 1823, 1845, 1856 and 1857). And in fact, Bechstein’s tales were even more popular than the Grimm's collection of tales for a time, as Ludwig Bechstein wrote his stories specifically with children and adolescents in mind (and yes, even his original publications were therefore lavishly illustrated), while the Brothers Grimm had originally anticipated adults as their target audience and therefore only later were their tales illustrated and geared more and more towards children (which also means that the Brothers Grimm often edited their later collections for so-called questionable content).

And indeed, while both Ludwig Bechstein and the Brothers Grimm obviously reworked their tales stylistically, Bechstein also and deliberately made ample use of both irony and humor. Similar to the satirical fairy tales of the late 18th century (Johann Karl August Musäus and Christoph Martin Wieland for example should come to mind), Ludwig Bechstein's heroes and heroines know the rules and equally the limitations of magic and sometimes even engage in humorous asides concerning the same. Furthermore and from a thematic standpoint, Bechstein's fairy tales are also often noted for their rather surprising for 19th century fairy tales gender egalitarianism. There are in fact equal numbers of wicked men and women present in Bechstein’s stories, and the female characters are generally and happily also not usually simply silenced or given unnecessary blame or punishments. And finally, Ludwig Bechstein's tales also often poke fun at society, by both satrizing it and setting authority on its head. But unfortunately, this was also one of the main reasons why the Grimm's fairy tales became more and more popular, as Bechstein's tales began to be regarded as supposedly not being quite "folksy" enough.

I really do wish I could have given Sämtliche Märchen more than just two stars (because the tales themselves are indeed lovely and all of them very much interesting), but there is one (but for me) supremely major issue that I to absolutely find extremely vexing, namely that the table of contents of Sämtliche Märchen only lists the starting points for each of Ludwig Bechstein’s four fairy tale collections and that therefore, the specific titles of the stories as well as their starting pages are not ever listed in the table of contents. Thus, if you are wanting to read a particular tale, or if you are actually trying to compare/contrast one fairy story with another, this becomes extremely frustrating, if not actually impossible. Also, fairy tales are often read to children, and this does not have to necessarily occur in a systematic order (it is often done randomly, with the reader or story teller selecting choice tales that a child might enjoy). However, the set-up for Sämtliche Märchen in my opinion virtually forces the reader, mandates the storyteller to read the presented tales one by one, from beginning to end so to speak, as there is no list of the stories and their titles available, only the titles of each specific Ludwig Bechstein collection (and yes, you could, I guess, leaf through the book at random to locate suitable tales, but that is a rather frustrating strategy, especially when it would have been and could have been so easy for the publisher to have simply added a detailed and organised list of the tales and their starting page numbers). And to tell the truth, I have actually been in possession of Sämtliche Märchen for quite some time (for at least a decade) but only recently have managed to peruse it, as I just did not have the time to read the collection from beginning to end. For indeed, if there had been a list of each and every story in the table of contents, I would and could have picked and chosen some random Ludwig Bechstein stories to read, but as it was, I had to wait until I had sufficient time to actually read the entire mega-volume of Sämtliche Märchen from cover to cover (and yes, my pet project, my idea of doing a detailed comparison of the Grimms' tales with Bechstein's tales will also now have to wait until I have managed to obtain a version of the latter with a less user-unfriendly table of contents).