In this episode we dish on the Grimm’s secret obsession with revenge, and solve the mystery of the stepmother switcheroo once and for all
Part 1 [04:32] - In which we learn that the Grimms are running a blue light special on sexual reassignment surgery
Part 2 [11:54] - In which we read a troubling bible story, repeat a cliché that’s anything but woke, and come across more famous last words that aren’t last words
Part 3 [21:16] - In which we peek into someone’s diary and find plenty of insults, grudges, hearsay, vulgarity, and petty peevish gossip
Part 4 [32:28] - In which we find the Grimms in Latin class, congratulating themselves on being the class clowns
Part 5 [41:29] - In which we find a bag full of jelly donuts, visit a gigantic, romantic library, and finally put a bow on these last 4 episodes of politics as usual
[Experiencing senior moments...? Maybe you need to listen to this podcast.]
[okay boomer]
[that’s not funny, but I will open up your eyes and ears for something funnier]
[I don’t have time for this]
[why are you so anxious to get away?
[OMG]
🎶 Anachronist 🎶
hi dere youse guys... and of course, shout out to da pope... hi dere yer holiness... welcome back to the Hansel and Gretel Code... this here is episode 42
[deo gratias]
In our last episode I gave a quote from the introduction to the 1840 edition of the Grimms’ tales... in it, Wilhelm wrote:
„...ich fühle mich in Liebe und Hass jugendlich erfrischt.‟
“...I feel that I am youthfully invigorated in love and in hate.”
[wtf?]
a little peculiar right...?
[no sir!]
well, however it landed with readers, this was Wilhelm expressing his personal feelings, but of course, the brothers, being practically joined at the hip, were also pretty much joined at the heart...
knowing what we now know of their life story, it’s not hard to understand how this quote betrays their one last burning wish...
🎶 La vendetta! Oh la vendetta! 🎶
that’s right... La vendetta... they wanted revenge...
[oooh]
but not the kind that’s uh, best served cold...
what they most wanted was the kind of immediate satisfaction that only comes from getting in the last word in a heated argument...
[fer sure]
for them it meant getting in the last word on Ernst August, the king of Hanover... just the way they did with William II the big kahuna of Hesse... but that ship had already sailed, because unlike William II, Ernst August never capitulated... so while the story turned cold, their anger burned and festered...
[sound of anger]
[sound of frustration]
[not good]
Of course we’ve already gone through the historical facts and reasons for the separate, and very personal beefs they had with both of these monarchs, so we’re not gonna rehash the Grimms’ recurrent tale of woe and indignation...
of course it’s not just the facts, it’s our Intuition telling us that EA was the main target of this youthfully invigorated hate Wilhelm had otherwise inexplicably admitted to...
in this episode we’re gonna take a closer look at the tactics of their cold war with EA, because that’s exactly what their beef with him became: a passive aggressive conflict that lingered for years and that the Grimms eventually won... but I gotta tell you, they’ve been waiting almost 200 years for someone like you and me to come along and recognize their victory...
[I’m still here. Waiting!]
hey, by the end of this episode you’re gonna know all about the two course meal of sweet revenge the Grimms managed to serve up, but you also get to decide for yourself if it’s really all that sweet, or just leaves you with the same kind of bad taste it left me with...
[I did NOT order THAT!]
*🎶*🎶*
PART 1 [04:32]
Teil eins: In which we learn that the Grimms are running a blue light special on sexual reassignment surgery
[sound of a man in pain]
[OMG, OMG, OMG!]
by 1840 EA was officially out of their lives, but never out of their thoughts or letters... and of course, reading between the lines of Hansel and Gretel is how we’re able to infer that their anger was mainly directed at EA and heavily concentrated on revenge...
it was by way of that 4th revision of Hansel and Gretel, they probably figured they had gotten their wish and managed to get the last word in... of course that word was:
[pizza!]
uh, no... the word was Stiefmutter...
As we learned in episode 41 the reason they turned Frau Holzhacker into a step mother... wasn’t their respect for motherhood... it was their hatred for EA... by making that switcheroo, they had turned H&G’s mother into a caricature of Ernst August...
[seriously?]
hey, when you think about it, when EA took over as the new king of Hanover, that’s exactly what he became to his new subjects: a step-parent...
except they didn’t turn Herr Holzhacker into a step-father... as despicable as his actions in the story are, the cultural idea of a step-father in the Grimms’ Zeitgeist would have been far too bland to match their anger and satisfy their thirst for revenge... not to mention the fact that the story ends in a joyful reunion with the guy...
no, the Grimms came to hate EA so much, they chose to portray him via the more powerfully ugly, sexist cliché of the stepmother...
[I don’t get it]
okay... it’s obvious there’s no literal equivalence between a king and a step-mother...
[you got that right]
in her excellent biography of the Grimms, Professor Ann Schmiesing of the University of Colorado was able to see how the Grimms used a handy literal equivalence to make a sly little dig at EA in the 1840 version of Das Blaue Licht, the Blue Light... a story, that was famously retold by Hans Christian Anderson as The Tinderbox...
****🤓
(a fairytale I’ve also spent considerable time digging into, and have arrived at a most interesting theory as to what THAT tale is all about!)
****
[what are you talking about?]
in Das Blaue Licht, a loyal soldier is returning home, presumably from the Thirty Years war, or maybe the Napoleonic wars, and gets treated in cavalier fashion by his king... in 1840 Wilhelm tweaked that opening to emphasize the injustice done to the faithful soldier by his king, and so by the magic of literary alchemy he turned the soldier into a stand-in for his brother Jacob, and of course, turned the king into a literal stand-in for the king of Hanover, EA...
[interesting]
the kicker is that the opening of the story echoes the opening paragraph of Jacob’s lengthy public diatribe concerning his treatment at the hands of EA...
of course the literal implication of a king treating his loyal soldier poorly was a little bland, but it made the satiric connection obvious to anyone steeped in the history of the moment — as were the Grimms’ contemporaries and friends, and the astute Prof. Schmiesing...
[aye, I agree]
here in Hansel and Gretel there’s no way to see EA in the step-mother... not if we’re looking with the eyes of logic, which would of course demand literal gender equivalence...
[definitely]
yeah, but you and I are looking with the eyes of Intuition... which means we’re looking for metaphoric equivalence...
[oh is it metaphoric? I thought it was meta three, so that means it’s even more expensive. OMG, OMG]
[ahem]
well, expense has nothing to do with it, but metaphor not only adds some distinctive literary spice to that cold dish of revenge, it makes literal gender equivalence unnecessary...
[I don’t think so]
if you wanna insist on literal equivalence, think of it this way...
what the Grimms did to Ernst Augustus in Hansel and Gretel was this: they performed literary sexual reassignment surgery on him...
[scream]
[inappropriate!]
[you mean they cut off his balls?]
metaphorically... yeah...
[Oh, that's hilarious. You're fucking disgusting]
alright, alright...
see that could be all we need to know to make a literal point... or even a literal exclamation point... it certainly solves the mystery of the stepmother switcheroo once and for all...
[applause]
but there’s more to this stepmother issue than meets the eye... and that’s because of what it can teach us about the Grimms themselves... something new and pretty different... so it’s well worth our while to flex those Intuitive muscles and dig deeper into the historical facts...
[I’m outta here]
hey, don’t go just yet...
[where are you going? You’re gonna miss all the fun.]
uh, yeah, what he said...
seriously, though... nobody has ever pulled the curtain back on the Grimms like this, not the way you and I are about to... and trust me, this stepmother business doesn’t just cast the Grimms in a new light... it gives us a pretty good look at their shadow as well...
[dark, sinister laughter]
[let us see]
[a woman screams]
*🎶*🎶*
PART 2 [11:54]
Teil zwei: In which we read a troubling bible story, repeat a cliché that’s anything but woke, and come across more famous last words that aren’t last words
[Hi, this is Ben and these are not my last words. um un, not my last words]
okay... just knowing the basic facts of the Göttingen 7 as we now do is more than enough to recognize the gender bending connection between the admittedly clichéd concept of a step-mother and EA’s treatment of the Brothers Grimm...
[this is repetitive]
sorry, but it bears repeating... I mean, think about what Frau Holzhacker does in this story... she kicks the children out of the house... which is pretty much what EA did to Jacob Grimm... metaphorically, of course...
[true that]
right... but there are two further pieces of evidence that seal the deal and clue us in to how and why the Grimms fought to get the last word in... just as they did in their beef with William II, the Elector of Hesse...
[alright already, get on with it!]
okay... first... consider the fact that the Grimms were educated in a time and place where studying the bible and memorizing great numbers of its passages — you know, just like Andy Dufresne...
[watch ye therefore, for ye know not therefore when the master of the house commeth]
[uh oh!]
that was the norm for most if not all literati...
[yeah]
with that in mind, consider this passage from Exodus concerning Joseph, the master dream interpreter and guy with that famously envy-inducing coat of many colors...
Exodus 1:8-14 says:
"Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. blah, blah, blah, blah.... So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor...blah, blah, blah....”
see, in this bible story Joseph had already passed, but this new king — this new pharaoh — immediately began mistreating the Israelites...
[so what’s your point?]
the point here is that we’re all familiar with the cultural cliché of the step-mother... the cliché says oh, she’s the new wife who doesn’t know her step-children from Adam — or Joseph — and immediately begins mistreating them...
[my god!]
yeah, I realize this is a hateful and misogynistic cliché...
[that’s right, baby]
[ahem]
consider that in Giambattista Basile's Nennillo and Nennilla — one of the models for Hansel and Gretel — the story gets introduced with a blanket statement spelling out that old crass cliché and makes it the driving force behind all the action.
now, I can’t quite give this quote the Napolitan accent it deserves, but it goes something like this:
ahem...
“...non essennose visto maie matreia che mirasse de buon uocchio le razze d'autro....”
[go to a therapist]
uh, the loose translation is:
“...nobody’s ever seen a stepmother who would cast a loving eye on the children of her predecessor....”
[si, si, si si, si, si, esatto, si, si]
uh, grazie...
Intuition says the Grimms may or may not have had this passage of Exodus in mind, but they sure got the stink eye from their new king, EA, and they believed wholeheartedly that he was mistreating everyone in the kingdom...
as I said in episode 41, 4 months into his reign as the new King of Hanover, he issued a royal patent — an official statement that 86’d the somewhat liberal constitution his older brother William IV had signed in 1833, and re-instated the much more conservative one his older, older brother, George IV had signed back in 1819...
of course that older, older constitution put him back in full charge of the kingdom’s financials...
[cha ching!]
what’s funny about the patent is that in it, EA specifically wrote:
“...our faithful subjects may be assured that Our feelings for them are those of a father for his children....”
[hmm, I see]
****
„...Unsere treuen Unterthanen mögen dagegen versichert sein, daß Unsere Gefühle für sie die eines Vaters für seine Kinder sind....“
****
obvious or not, by changing Hansel and Gretel’s mother into a stepmother the Grimms were mocking that very statement in such a way only their preferred readers would catch on to the joke... and as I said, their preferred readers would always include you and me...
[oh yeah]
as brazen and clever as that literary putdown was, they never dared admit to having their literary / professorial revenge carried out in a story read all over Germany (and the world) — and as far as we know, they didn’t boast about it in their correspondence...
[what a surprise]
back in January of 1838 though, right after he was deported from Göttingen and the Kingdom of Hanover, Jacob openly tried to get in the last word... actually, he tried getting in a helluva lotta last words... and that was by publishing a nearly 9000 word diatribe over his treatment at the hands of Ernst August...
[I feel tensed up!]
yeah, that sorta came through...
the piece was called Meine Entlassung / My Dismissal
realizing of course, that EA would read it, Jacob did a kind of literary slow burn and couched his very public anger in the passive aggressive language of professorial indignation and self-righteous argumentation... and I gotta tell you, Jacob goes on and on and on sermonizing and expressing his moral indignation over the whole affair... but obviously, this didn’t give him the satisfaction of getting in the last word...
[why not?]
sure Jacob was venting, and implying moral superiority, but EA still had the upper hand... after all, it was he who had fired both the brothers, and as long as they remained unemployed, he owned them and the last word...
uh, kinda like Aaron Rogers...
[fuck]
yeah... but then in 1840, momentum shifted in the brothers’ favor...
[what happened?]
well, we’re gonna get to that
[but first]
🎵 🥳 party horn 🥳 🎵
allow me to toot my own uh, party horn... AND to make a request...
I’m gonna ask youse guys to please just remember that you heard all this here first... because once word gets out — and I trust youse guys to spread the word — the true reason for the stepmother switcheroo in H&G is gonna become common knowledge... and that ain’t gonna be the last of our exclusive discoveries... but nobody’s gonna know we found them first... together, you and me, right here, unless you tell em... so, all I’m askin’ youse guys to do is rate, review, and share the podcast...
[thank you]
yeah, what he said...
🎵 🥳 party horn 🥳 🎵
*🎶*🎶*
PART 3 [21:16]
Teil drei: In which we peek into someone’s diary and find plenty of insults, grudges, hearsay, vulgarity, and petty peevish gossip
[there is nothing wrong with that]
fact is, even before 1840, the Grimms had no fear that EA would ever read Hansel and Gretel or even The Blue Light... much less catch on to the satiric picture of him they had krazy-glued into those 2 fairy tales...
as we know from episode 41 and his “ink fowl” comment — which is, of course the kind of throw away insult we moderns are used to hearing from, uh, you know who —
[yes, I know]
well, we know EA was famously anti-intellectual, and apparently had no time for and no interest in anything literary... which doesn’t mean he was a cretin, although he does come across as a rude, vulgar, boor... not unlike uh...
[Gavin newscum, he’s the governor of California / Newsome / he signed, newscum, I call him...]
[argidurgidurg]
hmm... and just for the record, that’s boor spelled b-o-o-r...
[oh and I suppose you think that’s funny, huh?]
oh boy...
now whether EA was or wasn’t a vulgarian... that’s certainly how he’s been written about... hey, in 1837, one Hamburg newspaper cast all subtlety aside and called him a dog...
[ruff, ruff]
[ahem]
the Grimms themselves threw plenty of shade at EA in letters to friends and associates, but always managed to do so in that typically detached, passive aggressive language of professors and, hmm, I don’t know, uh professors...
speaking of which, one of the juiciest quotes used to illustrate EA’s personality is a casual remark he made insulting the brothers and their Göttingen confreres... to wit: he is supposed to have said some version of: “Professors, dancers and whores can always be had for money...”
[oh, my]
since it’s often quoted without naming the source, finding that source could have become just another disappointing trip up the Nile... this time though, I found a source that gave me the source: it was a letter from Wilhelm Grimm dated April 23, 1842
[awesome!]
now quoting from Wilhelm, it said:
"Well, Mr. von Humboldt, what are my lost Göttingen professors up to? But you know, professors, dancers and whores can always be brought back for money."
****
...nun herr v. Humboldt, was machen meine verlaufenen göttinger professoren? aber Sie wißen ja professoren, tänzerinnen und huren kann man überall für geld wiederhaben.
****
[that’s right, baby]
now, as an independent researcher, having the date of the letter and the names of both correspondents was one thing... finding the letter on-line was something else... fortunately, the Grimm archive did indeed put the letter out there for everyone to see...
[okee dokee]
thing is, that link only gives us a scan of the original, not the transcript... which sounds fine, except reading the chicken scratches of those Federvieh, or ink fowl, isn’t the easiest of tasks... and yes it’s Virgo overkill to have sought it out, but finding it did satisfy Intuition, and provide us with a little more interesting context...
[oh yeah, like what?]
we know for sure it was written 5 years after the Grimms’ confrontation with EA and all the hardship and distress that incident caused both brothers...
[yeah, so what?]
what’s important here is that this letter was written in 1842, which was 2 years after their fortunes had already taken a major turn not just for the better, but for the best...
[well that’s good news]
yeah sure, thing is though, despite those 2 years of peace and prosperity — with no financial or professional worries on the horizon — we can still sense the anger and resentment festering behind what amounts to a petty, passive aggressive complaint...
[who cares?]
finding this letter wasn’t just some fussy and redundant virgoan exercise... it tells us that as far as the Grimms were concerned, bygones were definitely NOT bygones...
I’ll admit, there are times when the result of successful philologic research turns out to be anything but historically significant, or worse, proves to be a huge waste of time and boring as fuck...
[yup!]
still this letter gives us a little more context to support what our intuition has lately been whispering to us about the dark and touchy side of the Grimm brothers...
[how?]
see, reading it through reveals the quote to be at least 3rd person hearsay and a real game of telephone... in other words, purely gratuitous, peevish gossip...
[oh really?]
yeah... and here are the facts:
in the first place Wilhelm Grimm is quoting this now famous phrase in his letter to Gustav Hugo, a lawyer friend from Göttingen...
secondly, Wilhelm says it was a remark made by EA to Alexander von Humboldt — the famous polymath and explorer — at a dinner party in Berlin... a party at which the Grimms would scarcely have been welcome...
next Wilhelm says he heard the remark (and von Humboldt’s reply) from professor Henrik Steffens...
finally he says that professor Steffens told him that he heard it from Fürstbischof Leopold von Sedlnitzky, who we can only presume was at the dinner and heard it all first hand...
[wow!]
but then it turns out — according to an excellent German biography of the Brothers from 2009 — this professors and whores remark was an old stale joke Ernest had been heard to come out with 4 years earlier... which is to say in 1838, not too long after he originally fired the 7 professors...
[is that so?]
well, I couldn’t get hold of the source of that revelation, but in looking for it, I learned that Alexander von Humboldt himself reported the professors and whores remark first hand in a letter to a certain Karl Varnhagen von Ense...
[who’s this?]
von Ense was a writer who is probably more famous for being the husband of Rahel Varnhagen, a seriously important saloniste and intellectual of the Grimms’ Zeitgeist... but he also kept a famous diary that served as a useful source of information and gossip about Ernst August and the Grimms... including that business of some newspaper calling EA a dog...
****🤓🧐🤪
try as I might, (and believe me I tried pretty hard) I couldn’t find the original newspaper article... but here is the diary entry:
Donnerstag , den 14. Dezember 1837.
„Gans kam und brachte den beißenden Artikel der Hamburger Zeitung, wo der König von Hannover als Hund bezeichnet wird; dergleichen packt, alle Welt hat Freude an dem Streich, und daß er gelungen iſt.‟
"Gans came and brought the biting article from the Hamburger Zeitung, in which the King of Hanover is called a dog; such things grab everyone's attention, everyone is happy about the prank and that it has succeeded."
****
but I digress...
[please stop that]
alright, well, von Humboldt’s letter is dated April 6th, 1842... only 17 days before that of Wilhelm Grimm... but the important thing is that in it he makes it clear that this was indeed, an old, vulgar joke EA liked to repeat in mixed company...
****🤓
Letter of April 6th 1842 Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense
„Der konstitutionelle Roi des Landes hat gestern, vor vierzig Menschen, wieder an seinem Tische gesagt: die Göttinger Professoren hätten in einer Adresse ihm von ihrem Patriotismus gesprochen, „Professoren haben gar kein Vaterland; Professoren, Huren (der Deutlichkeit wegen setzte er hinzu des putains) und Tänzerinnen kann man überall für Geld haben, sie gehen dahin, wo man ihnen einige Groschen mehr bietet." Welche Schande, das einen deutschen Fürsten zu nennen!‟
“The constitutional Roi des Landes once again said yesterday at dinner in the presence of forty people: The professors of Göttingen had talked of their patriotism in an address to him. Professors, he said, have no country at all. Professors, prostitutes, and dancers may be had everywhere for money; they go to the highest bidder. What a shame to call such a fellow a German Prince!"
****
[so what’s your point?]
it tells us is that neither EA nor the Grimms could ever let go of the grudge they held against each other...
[can you believe that?]
hey, any fool can hold a grudge... but it takes real character to avoid complaining about someone we personally dislike... and while character was something Ernst August did not seem to possess... what does it say about the Grimms...?
[um, I don’t know]
sure, it takes a saint to avoid complaining about the boss who fired you for following your conscience... but it takes a resentful, and somewhat arrogant professor to gossip and complain in classically ciceronian fashion, which here means to gossip and complain without wanting to cast no aspersions...
[nonsense!]
obviously, vulgarity didn’t give EA the last word, but claiming the moral high ground sure didn’t give Jacob or Wilhelm the satisfaction they craved, either...
like bickering siblings, the three of them kept trying...and failing...to get in the last word... even after the satiric success of the step-mother switcheroo...
[this is really confusing for me]
well remember I said that there were 2 pieces of evidence sealing the deal on this Ernst August as stepmother business...
[no!]
uh, why am I not surprised...
[what’s that you say?]
uh nothing...
what I meant was, the first piece of evidence was that biblical quote... the second piece is even more telling
[hmm, what’s that?]
well, we’re just about to find out...
[but first]
*🎶*🎶*
PART 4 [32:28]
Teil vier: In which we find the Grimms in Latin class, congratulating themselves on being the class clowns
[what are you studying at college? / Pig Latin. atWhay reAy ouYay oingDay onightTay]
[woo woo woo woo...]
[OMG]
the second and most definitive piece of evidence was that funny business we discovered all the way back in Episode 20... how in 1843, in their 5th edition, Wilhelm added that completely gratuitous line in which Frau Holzhacker — now a step-mother — calls her husband a fool and sarcastically tells him he might as well start planing the planks of their coffins...
you remember that, right...?
[no!]
alright, well... what she said was:
„O du Narr,“ sagte sie, „dann müssen wir alle viere Hungers sterben, du kannst nur die Bretter für die Särge hobelen,“ Die zwei Kinder hatten vor Hunger auch nicht einschlafen können und hatten gehört was die Stiefmutter zum Vater gesagt hatte.
"O, you fool!" said she, "Then we must all four die of hunger, you may as well plane the planks for our coffins....” The two children had also not been able to sleep for hunger, and had heard what their step-mother had said to their father.
[mother fucker!]
so I don’t know if you remember, but we nailed the literary source of that line in Episode 20...
[oh yeah, very nice] tom hagen
so just briefly, we found out that the fool and coffin business was a wickedly clever metalepsis referring to a very funny German satire written in Latin and known as Eccius Dedolatus... meaning planed down Eck — Eck being the German word for corner, but it’s also a family name...
so the Eck referred to in the satire — and the butt of the joke — was a certain Johann Maier von Eck (13 November 1486 – 13 February 1543)
and I gotta admit that it was only while revising this episode that I caught the joke in the title, there being no such word as Eccius in latin... turns out Eccius was a silly latin neologism referring to Eck... you know, a joke name...
exactly...
and dedolatus... that is indeed a legitimate latin word meaning smoothed out... but it also means to beat someone with a stick... and includes the more colloquially obscene concept of fucking someone up...
[crowd intake of breath]
or perhaps even just plain um, fucking...
[ooh!]
back in episode 20 we didn’t go very deeply into why Wilhelm included the satire as a metalepsis in the story... and we certainly didn’t mention the fact that this inclusion, was indeed his final revenge on EA...
[oh wow, man!]
[why not?]
well, back in episode 20, I realized this was directly related to the Grimms” anger over the Göttingen seven affair... I mean, given the dates involved, it all made too much sense... but back then I wasn’t ready to dish on the historic details... and I didn’t really want to drag too much of the Grimms’ personal business into the podcast... so I thought I could do a short piece on it later, as a kind of bonus episode... but then we reached the point in the fairytale with that stupid tree branch swinging in the breeze thingy... and once we started digging into the philologic facts behind it well... what can I say...? it’s how the Grimms rudely elbowed their way into our discussion...
so here we are... and here now are those philologic facts:
Johann Eck was a 16th century theologian who had publicly clashed with Luther in a crucially famous debate, and was then responsible for ghost writing most of the papal bull, Exsurge Domine on behalf of Pope Leo
[what?]
not Da Pope...
this was 4 Leos ago... Leo X
[OMG]
anyway, Exsurge Domine was the papal bull that excommunicated Luther... and which he very publicly burned at the Wartburg Castle as his response...
****🤓
****
[oooh]
what’s super-clever about connecting Ernst August to the Johann Eck of this latin text — a text considered the best and most hilarious medieval satire in Germany — is that the papal bull was not only extremely unpopular in Germany, it was publicly disobeyed... just as EA’s declaration and demand for an oath of allegiance was unpopular and publicly disobeyed by the Grimms...
****🤓
Exsurge Domine marks a watershed event in Christian history. Protestant author Philip Schaff notes: "The bull of excommunication is the papal counter-manifesto to Luther's Theses, and condemns in him the whole cause of the Protestant Reformation. Therein lies its historical significance. It was the last bull addressed to Latin Christendom as an undivided whole, and the first which was disobeyed by a large part of it."
****
and don’t forget that EA not only fired the brothers from their University jobs, he more or less excommunicated Jacob Grimm by having him deported from the Kingdom of Hanover...
[huh?]
well, Luther got kicked out of the Church, and Jacob got kicked out of... well you get what I’m saying, right...?
[yes, I know]
the connection between Eck and EA is a bit convoluted, and not at all literal, but it’s very literary, and therefore, devilishly clever...
[but that is not all]
right... the subtlety and the literary nature of the satire also gave the Grimms plausible deniability... only their preferred readers and friends would realize “plane the planks of our coffins” was code for Ernst Augustus Dedolatus...
[holy shit! Hah, hahaha]
in effect, they weren’t just calling EA a fool... and a rough hewn jerk in need of forcible refinement... through the combined magic of metaphor and metalepsis they subjected him to the same horrible yet hilarious literary fate as the conservative old Eck of the satire... a fate that included getting the shit kicked out of him both figuratively and literally (since he was purged within an inch of his life) and eventually, castration...
[a man screams]
[wicked!]
given EA’s reputation for being a guy with extremely rough edges and a blunt rudeness that qualified him as a vulgar churl... the brothers probably laughed themselves silly in making that satiric connection... and then no doubt, congratulated themselves for finally getting sweet revenge and the last laugh...
[ah, very good]
except why did they wait until 1843 to insert this savagely satiric and incredibly funny metalepsis into the story...? why not do it in 1840, when they first lampooned EA via the step-mother joke...?
[I don’t know]
here’s our theory...
[but first]
[I’m gonna take a little break]
*🎶*🎶*
PART 5 [41:29]
Teil fünf: In which we find a bag full of jelly donuts, visit a gigantic, romantic library, and finally put a bow on these last 4 episodes of politics as usual
[yum, donut, mmm, forbidden donut]
[oh brother]
remember our wishy-washy King of Prussia from Episode 40, Frederick William III or Friedrich Wilhelm der Dritte...?
[your German pronunciation must be much better]
yeah, yeah, I get it...
I meant Fritzi-Willi...
[righty oh]
he was related to Ernst August by marriage and, being the timid sort of character history (and Henry Kissinger) tells us he was, was reportedly afraid to offend Ernie, which apparently is why he never dared to appoint any members of ‘The Göttingen Seven’ to the nice lucrative and stable positions in Berlin that most of them coveted.
[I want it! I want it!! I want it...!!!]
[no. not gonna happen. nope!]
[OMG]
unemployed and stuck licking his wounds in Cassel, thin skinned Jacob Grimm, in particular, seethed over the fact that his good and powerful friend, Prof. Savigny — late of Göttingen and now um, ein Berliner — did nothing to help him find a position in Berlin... but more tellingly, never offered Jacob the enthusiastic moral support he expected and craved...
[no, really? I am so surprised about that]
Then, on June 7th 1840,
[a miracle!]
yup... wishy-washy Fritzi-Willi died and was succeeded as King of Prussia by his son, Frederick William IV, who was sometimes called ‘The Romantic on the Throne’
[oh I love you, I love you. I fucking love you. I...]
alright, alright...
he was called romantic because he was full of liberal ideas...
[(sound of disgust) well, then!]
while he was a nephew of EA, he wasn’t intimidated by him, and tended to treat him as that weird old uncle many of us seem to know from awkward Thanksgiving dinners...
[oh boy]
According to our intrepid diarist, Varnhagen von Ense... this Fritzi was, in fact, often amused by EA’s big mouth and rough edges:
“The eighty-year-old King of Hanover still uses the same phrases as before. Our queen and her ladies blush or turn away in disgust, our king laughs out loud.”
laughing more at him, I suppose, than with him...
[oh yeah]
****🤓
„Der achtzigjährige König von Hannover führt noch immer Redensarten wie früher. Unsre Königin und ihre Damen erröthen oder wenden sich unwillig ab, unser König lacht aus vollem Halse.‟
****
after an intense barrage of political lobbying by the Grimms’ good friend Bettina von Arnim, this new King of Prussia invited the brothers to come live and work in Berlin, and promised them a salary that made them set for life...
[berliner applause]
[wow!]
and so, early in December of 1840 Jacob travelled alone to Berlin, a city he’d never been to before, and crashed, er I mean was hosted at the home of one Karl Hartwig Gregor von Meusebach (6 June 1781 – 22 August 1847)... a much respected lawyer and scholar and a loyal friend of long standing...
[indeed]
Meusebach helped Jacob find a nice, 10 room apartment near the Tiergarten, and once Wilhelm arrived the brothers happily settled in and became real jelly donuts, er, I mean Berliner...
[ich bin ein Berliner]
yup, just like JFK...
[dad joke laugh]
all pastry aside,
[dad joke groans]
they remained good friends with Herr Professor von Meusebach, who, according to a very readable Grimms biography by Ruth Michaelis-Jena:
“was a much-loved man with a great sense of humour.”
[that’s nice]
now here’s the thing... according to Wikipedia, Meusebach was an expert on German literature, and during his lifetime, had amassed a personal library of 36,000 volumes of 16th–17th-century literature...
[whoa!]
according to an original article in the Deutsche Zeitung of February 9th 1850 — and yes, I was able to find the source at archive.org...
(No. 40 Zweite Beilage zur Deutschen Zeitung 9. Februar 1850)
Meuseback’s library held 25K different works totaling between 36 & 38K volumes...
[I'm sure that there must be SOMETHING in this library] 422909
yeah, I suspect so... little by little he had expanded his library to include as complete a collection as possible of literature from the end of the 15th to the end of the 18th century...
[boring!]
not so fast, my frent... turns out, a good portion of his collection contained satires and other humorous works...
[so what’s your point?]
well, my point is I believe the Grimms only came across Eccius Dedolatus in Meusebach’s amazing personal library...
[maybe]
and since they only visited his library for the very first time at the very end of 1840, adding the clever metaleptic reference to Eccius Dedolatus had to wait until their 1843 edition...
[Lewis, I think I've found what we're looking for]
yup...! of course, that’s only Intuition speaking... despite this being the coup de grâce to their beef with EA, there’s no smoking gun to back up my claim about Meusebach...
[oh, well that’s nice]
yeah well, there’s no evidence that shoots down my claim, either... and uh, sarcasm does not count as evidence...
[OOH!]
so we only have this idea about the size and scope of Meusebach’s book collecting because after his death, the library was inventoried, and then instead of being sold off piecemeal, was sold complete to the Berlin State library...
[Have you found anything useful in any of those books?]
unfortunately, that inventory must have been way too extensive to be published, since there’s no trace of it anywhere...
what we do know, however, is that all of the books from his collection have an ex libris label to identify them as such... and while none of the copies of Eccius Dedolatus listed in the library’s on-line catalogue have that label, the catalogue reports 2 copies as lost or destroyed in the war... it also lists a 3rd copy that now sits in some Moscow library, presumably taken as war booty...
[shit happens]
so it’s not at all far-fetched to believe one of those now lost copies was the one Meusebach owned and would have been delighted, if not eager, to share with the Grimms...
[that’s it!]
[I like it!]
so there we have it... in these last 4 episodes we’ve uncovered almost a century’s worth of political history crammed in between the lines of that silly tree branch contraption...
we’ve also discovered the most likely explanation for the stepmother switcheroo in the 1840 edition, along with the full significance of that silly coffin carpentry remark in the 1843 edition...
[that is excellent]
all of this makes us the first readers since the late 19th / MAYBE early, early 20th century to uncover what seems to be the real truth of the matter...
[really?]
yeah... as I keep saying, Intuition tells us at least some of the Grimms contemporary readers would likely have known all this as well...
[fascinating]
I also wanna say the reason it took so fucking long to produce these 4 episodes wasn’t because I was dawdling... it was because the Grimms insisted on sticking their political 2 cents into Hansel and Gretel and tried to get the last laugh on Ernst August in the bargain...
our job is to go wherever the text leads us... and in this case that turned out to be a ridiculously long, bumpy research road full of mud and potholes, not to mention more than a few dead ends... the whole thing was a messy detour that took us pretty far out of our way from the original meaning of the fairytale...
so it’s kinda hard to sympathize with the Grimm brothers, because having taken their editorial work seriously we followed where they led us... but instead of artistic integrity, what we found was a combination political op ed and petty personal revenge all masquerading as literary nicety...
[you realize some people are not going to be happy with this]
yeah, don’t I know it...
the more I think about it, the more I sense that it was Meusebach himself who didn’t just suggest the reference to Eccius Dedolatus, but wrote the line and gifted it to the Grimms as a gesture of friendship and delight...
[what?]
I say that because Meusebach was in fact renowned for his playful collages, artfully gluing printed words into all sorts of documents to both fool and amuse his friends...
[wow]
as a much more accomplished and light-hearted sort of artist than the stodgy Grimm brothers, and because the Eccius Dedolatus metalepsis is so witty, and so cleverly inserted into the story, I’m convinced (at least intuitively) that it was all his doing...
[yes, I think you’re right]
cool!
in our next episode, we can finally leave the Grimms’ political 2 cents behind and go back to sussing out what the original author of the fairy tale had in mind and wanted us to find in between the lines... much of which is way better constructed, well worth knowing, and anything but mean-spirited...
[show respect y’all. show some respect please]
yeah, it’s fine to respect the Grimms for all the important work they’re genuinely responsible for... but they’re not responsible for creating this fairytale, or for the true depth of meaning it holds...
so far, we know its author wanted us to discover the real meaning of Hansel and Gretel bread... which we’ve already sussed out as the true Grace of God... but Intuition tells us we still have to discover what true grace is... because as a religious abstraction, that word, grace, may work for some people...
[alright, well, that’s good enough for me. it’s close enough]
yeah, but our author had something much more tangible in mind... and was leading us towards not just knowing what grace is, but actually giving us a taste of the real thing... which is pretty far from what we found in these last 4 episodes
[wow]
all of this political business the Grimms inserted into the story wasn’t just a detour off the road towards grace... they hijacked our attention and they took advantage of our intuitive diligence and curiosity all for the sake of their own ego...
[sound of shock]
so here I am complaining, but my complaint isn’t so much about all the intuitive, philologic work we had to do... what we discovered was truly interesting, and a terrific intellectual exercise, but it didn’t bring us any closer to the most important point of this fairytale, which is to discover the true meaning of grace... and so getting the last word in — whether literary or otherwise — and satisfying a hunger for vengeance is an ugly substitute for that true grace we’re all still hungry for...
[hey, check your blood sugar]
well, I’m sorry to say, Ernst Augustus may have been one helluva vulgar narcissist and a real asshole, but the Grimms had no business dragging their beef with him into Hansel and Gretel...
[I’m not sayin nuthin]
okay, just to put a bow on this, here’s an unofficial obituary of Ernst Augustus as written in the personal diary of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense
11-18-1851:
„Ernst August, König von Hannover, der alte Sünder, ist heute früh in Hannover gestorben; er taugte nach keiner Seite was, ein gemeiner Kerl durch und durch, kein Mensch war ihm anhänglich, eine Stinkpflanze aus dem Miste der Legitimität herausgewachsen.‟
"Ernst August, King of Hanover, the old sinner, died this morning in Hanover; he was no good in any respect, a mean fellow through and through, beloved of no one, a stink plant grown out of the dung of legitimacy."
[oh, that’s a lotta fake news, whoa]
[argidurgadurg]
okay, okay, time to put all that political, uh dung behind us and take a listen to where we left off in the manuscript version, and then finally move on to the next line of the fairytale...
[hooray!]
„sie warten lang bis es Nacht ward, aber die Eltern kamen nicht wieder. Da fing das Schwesterchen an gar sehr zu weinen, das Brüderchen tröstete es aber und nahm es an die Hand.‟
They waited a long time. Night came on, but the parents didn't come back. Then the little sister began to cry terribly, but the little brother comforted her and took her by the hand.
🎶 sax improv 🎶
that’s right we’re finally going to learn the secret behind Gretel’s crying jags, and find out why crying is just about the only thing she ever does in this story — until she saves the day, of course...
alrighty then, ciao a tutti...
[this concludes our broadcast day. good night and god bless america]
[well, good night]
**There are still plenty more peanuts that I want to credit below (~120!!)... I hope to get to them (and the remaining credits from Episodes 39, 40, and 41) within the next couple of days +/or weeks)... my sincerest apologies for the delay...***
got a question, or just want to say hi...?
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*Chapter Titles, and sonstiges material read by Anna Jacobsen*
*Librivox recording of Hansel and Gretel (auf Deutsch) read by Stephan Gambke*
*Librivox recording of Hansel and Gretel (in English) read by Bob Neufeld*
Music Credits:
*🎶*🎶* Bleeping Demo by Kevin MacLeod of incompetech.com and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License
🎶 Anachronist 🎶 by Kevin MacLeod of incompetech.com and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License
🎶 sax improv 🎶 courtesy of tc630 and freesound.org
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons 0 License
kristo's awesome Peanut Gallery
(in order of appearance, and most, courtesy of freesound.org)
@00:00 "Senior moments...???" - AI Announcer
@00:06 "okay Boomer" - Chlöe Swarbrick
@00:08 "...something funnier" courtesy of Duisterwho and freesound.org
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@00:13 "I don't have time for this!" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@00:16 "why are you so anxious...?" - Dr. Van Helsing
@00:22 "oh my God" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@00:46 "Deo gratias" - not Da Pope
@01:17 "WTF!" courtesy of buggly and freesound.org
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@01:22 "No Sir!" courtesy of theuncertainman and freesound.org
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@01:50 🎶 La vendetta! 🎶 - Dott. Bartolo / Sam Carl
@02:05 "oooh" courtesy of jppi_Stu and freesound.org
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@02:21 "fer sure” courtesy of Iceofdoom and freesound.org
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@02:52 sound of anger courtesy of Reitanna Seishin and freesound.org
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https://freesound.org/people/jorickhoofd/sounds/180342/
@02:55 sound of frustration courtesy of jorickhoofd and freesound.org
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@02:58 "not good" courtesy of nooc and freesound.org
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@04:05 "I'm waiting...!" courtesy of pyro13djt and freesound.org
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@04:28 "I did NOT order THAT" courtesy of itinerantmonk108 and freesound.org
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PART ONE / Teil eins @04:32
@04:44 a man screams courtesy of thanvannispen and freesound.org
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@04:46 "OMG, OMG, OMG!" courtesy of Krystal Flores and freesound.org
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@05:30 "pizza!" courtesy of Nighteller and freesound.org
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@06:01 "seriously?" courtesy of metrostock99 and freesound.org
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@06:57 "I don't get it" courtesy of MatteusNova and freesound.org
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@07:05 "you got THAT right" - Tony Soprano
@07:38 "what are you talking about?" courtesy of laelizondo and freesound.org
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@08:22 "...interesting" courtesy of Reitanna Seishin and freesound.org
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@08:59 "aye, I agree" courtesy of bectec and freesound.org
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@09:14 "definitely" courtesy of bectec and freesound.org
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@09:24 "metaphoric...???" courtesy of Krystal Flores and freesound.org
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@09:34 "ahem" courtesy of Alivvie and freesound.org
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@09:51 "I don't think so" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@10:10 a guy screams courtesy of Kalibrk and freesound.org
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@10:11 “inappropriate!” courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@10:13 "...cut off his balls?" - AI Arno
@10:19 "Oh, that's hilarious…" - Roman Roy
@10:38 applause courtesy of deleted_user_2104797 and freesound.org
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@11:04 “I'm outta here!” courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@11:09 "where are you going…?" - Paul McDaggett
@11:38 dark evil laugh courtesy of cacti225
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@11:40 "let us see” courtesy of Roses1401 and freesound.org
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@11:49 woman screams courtesy of thanvannispen and freesound.org
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PART TWO / Teil zwei @11:54
@12:12 "...not my last words" - Ben Hollis
@12:39 "this is repetitive" courtesy of honest_cactus and freesound.org
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@13:01 "true, that" - Omar Little
@13:20 "alright already, get on with it!" courtesy of metrostock99 and freesound.org
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@13:39 "watch ye therefore…" - Andy Dufresne / Matthew 24:42
@13:47 "uh oh!" courtesy of DWOBoyle and freesound.org
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@13:53 "yeah...?" courtesy of bectec and freesound.org
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@14:41 "What's your point?" - George Costanza
@15:00 "my god!" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@15:07 "that's right, baby" courtesy of Iceofdoom and freesound.org
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@15:10 "ahem" courtesy of Alivvie and freesound.org
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@ "go to a therapist!" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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@15:50 "go to a therapist!" courtesy of deleted_user_1390811 and freesound.org
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***
[si, si, si...! / esatto!] 16:04
"si, si, si...!" courtesy of maurolupo and freesound.org
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"esatto!" courtesy of kommunic8 and freesound.org
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***
@17:07 "cha-ching!" courtesy of angelak_m and freesound.org
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@17:25 "Hmm, I see" - Monty Burns
@17:49 "oh yeah" courtesy of Legnalegna55 and freesound.org
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@18:12 "what a surprise..." courtesy of Duisterwho and freesound.org
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@18:41 "I feel tensed up!" courtesy of Duisterwho and freesound.org
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@19:30 "why not?" courtesy of Duisterwho and freesound.org
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@19:56 "fuuck" courtesy of cognito perceptu and freesound.org
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@20:06 "what happened!?" courtesy of Reitanna Seishin and freesound.org
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@20:10 "but first..." - Mark Carman
@20:13 🥳 ♪ party horn ♪ 🥳 courtesy of beerre and freesound.org
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@21:06 "thank you" - Freddy Benson
@21:12 🥳 ♪ party horn ♪ 🥳 courtesy of beerre and freesound.org
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