Struwwelpeter


Der Struwwelpeter is an 1845 German children's book written and illustrated by the German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann. It comprises ten illustrated and rhymed stories, mostly about children. Each cautionary tale has a clear moral lesson that demonstrates the disastrous consequences of misbehavior in an exaggerated way. The title of the first story provides the title of the whole book.
Der Struwwelpeter is one of the earliest books for children that combine visual and verbal narratives in a book format, and is considered a precursor to comic books. Der Struwwelpeter is known for introducing the villainous character of the Tailor to Western literature. Some researchers now see the stories in the book as illustrations of modern child mental disorders.

Background

Hoffmann wrote the book that would later be titled Struwwelpeter in reaction to what he perceived as a lack of good books for children. Intending to buy a picture book as a Christmas present for his three-year-old son, Hoffmann instead wrote and illustrated his own book. At the time of producing it, Hoffmann had no intentions of publishing his book.

Publications

The first appearance of Hoffmann's book outside his immediate family circle was in a meeting organized by Frankfurt literary club Tutti Frutti Society on 18 January 1845. On the evening of that day,, a co-founder of publishing company Literarische Anstalt, bought Hoffmann's book for 80 gulden. Hoffmann later wrote that " that night, at 11 o'clock, I had, almost without knowing what I had done, suddenly become an author of juvenile books."
The book first appeared in the Frankfurt marketplace in October of that year under the title Lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder mit 15 schön kolorierten Tafeln für Kinder von 3–6 Jahren. The first version had its illustrations printed with lithographic plates and colored by hand with stencils, the text was printed using typesetting. On 3 October, the book was advertised in the Börsenblatt for a retail price of 48 kreuzer.
In 1846, three other editions of the book were published. The second edition had 5,000 copies produced, each of which was priced at 57 kreuzer; Hoffmann's royalty was of 6.25 percent per copy. Hoffmann's name was only partially revealed in the second edition, where he used the pseudonym "Hoffmann Kinderslieb". His authorship of the book was, however, fully revealed to the public in an advertisement featured on a Frankfurter Konversationsblatt publication on 11 December 1846. Hoffmann's real name was only fully displayed in the fifth edition, which was published in 1847.
The third edition was the first to be officially titled Struwwelpeter, though the second edition had already been nicknamed as such by some book reviewers.

English editions

The titles Struwelpeter and Strewelpeter have been used in multiple English editions of Struwwelpeter. The name Slovenly Peter was first found in an 1849 American version of the book.
British twin illustrators Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone provided new illustrations for an English translation published in 1950.

Copyright issues

In 1847, Struwwelpeter publishing house sued a Nuremberg publisher for printing the book on broadsheets.
In 1851, the same organization sued publisher Christian Scholz on grounds that he had plagiarized Struwwelpeter by publishing translations of the book in English, Dutch and Swedish. Scholz lost the case and was sentenced to pay a fine of 1,040 gulden, along with court costs of 127 gulden. He was also ordered to destroy all lithographic plates and unsold books in his inventory. This became one of the first copyright court cases in Germany.
In 1891 Mark Twain wrote his own translation of the book, but because of copyright issues Twain's Slovenly Peter was not published until 1935, 25 years after his death.

The stories

  1. Struwwelpeter describes a lazy, dirty boy who does not groom himself properly and is consequently unpopular.
  2. Die Geschichte vom bösen Friederich : A violent boy terrorizes animals and people. Eventually he is bitten by a dog, who goes on to eat the boy's food while Frederick is bedridden.
  3. Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug : A girl plays with matches, accidentally ignites herself and burns to death. Only her cats mourn her.
  4. Die Geschichte von den schwarzen Buben : Nikolas catches three boys teasing a dark-skinned boy. To teach them a lesson, he dips them in black ink.
  5. Die Geschichte von dem wilden Jäger is the only story not primarily focused on children. In it, a hare steals a hunter's musket and eyeglasses and begins to hunt the hunter. In the ensuing chaos, the hare's child is burned by hot coffee and the hunter jumps into a well.
  6. Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher : A mother warns her son Konrad not to suck his thumbs. However, when she goes out of the house he resumes his thumb-sucking, until a roving tailor appears and cuts off his thumbs with giant scissors.
  7. Die Geschichte vom Suppen-Kaspar begins as Kaspar, a healthy, strong boy, proclaims that he will no longer eat his soup. Over the next five days, he becomes skinny, wastes away, and dies. The last illustration shown is of his grave, which has a soup tureen atop it.
  8. Die Geschichte vom Zappel-Philipp : A boy who won't sit still at dinner accidentally knocks all of the food onto the floor, to his parents' great displeasure.
  9. Die Geschichte von Hans Guck-in-die-Luft concerns a boy who habitually fails to watch where he is walking. One day he walks into a river; he is soon rescued, but his briefcase drifts away.
  10. Die Geschichte vom fliegenden Robert : A boy goes outside during a storm. The wind catches his umbrella and lifts him high into the air, with the boy sailing into the distance.

    Music, film, and stage adaptations

A British stage production of Shockheaded Peter, by Philip Carr and Nigel Playfair, with music by Walter Rubens, premiered at the Garrick Theatre in London on 26 December 1900, and played 41 performances. The title role was played by George Grossmith Jr., with Kate Bishop as Mamma and Kitty Loftus as Harriet. The piece returned to the Garrick the following year, again playing 41 performances from 14 December, this time with Lawrence Grossmith as Peter, Nina Boucicault as Harriet and 11-year-old Marie Lohr as "Child". In a revival at the Wimbledon Theatre in South London from 26 December 1929 Mamma was played in a limited run of matinees by Louie Pounds, with H. Scott Russell as Papa, Leslie Holland as Augustus and Rex London as Peter.
Geoffrey Shaw's Struwelpeter, produced in 1914, featured the song "Conrad Suck-a-Thumb" by Martin Shaw.
A ballet of Der Struwwelpeter with music composed by Norbert Schultze was produced in Germany before World War II.
A live action film based on the book was released in Germany in 1955. Directed by Fritz Genschow, in this adaptation there is a "happy" ending where the characters' bad deeds are reversed.
Little Suck-a-Thumb is a psychoanalytical interpretation of the infamous cautionary tale. The short film by writer/director David Kaplan stars Cork Hubbert and Evelyn Solann, with Jim Hilbert as the Great Tall Scissorman.
"The Misadventures of Struwwelpeter" for tenor and piano was composed by Michael Schelle in 1991. Five of the stories are included in the original version with piano. "Inky Boys" is included only in the chamber version.
Struwwelpeterlieder is a setting of three of the stories for soprano, viola and piano by American composer Lowell Liebermann.
German composer Kurt Hessenberg arranged Der Struwwelpeter for children's choir later in his life.
Shockheaded Peter is a British musical by The Tiger Lillies. that combines elements of pantomime and puppetry with musical versions of the poems with the songs generally following the text. It won a number of British theatre awards in the years following its release.
Composer Kenneth Hesketh's 2000–2001 work, Netsuke comprises five short movements inspired variously by Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince, Struwwelpeter, and a poem by Walter de la Mare.

Comics adaptations

German comics artist David Füleki has created a number of manga-style adaptions of Struwwelpeter:
  • Struwwelpeter: Die Rückkehr
  • Struwwelpeter: Das große Buch der Störenfriede
  • Struwwelpeter in Japan
The Scissorman story is adapted into comics form by Sanya Glisic in The Graphic Canon, Volume 2, published in 2012.

Media influences

Literature

English author Edward Harold Begbie's first published book, The Political Struwwelpeter, is of British politics, with the British Lion is as Struwwelpeter, "bedraggled, with long, uncut claws."
W. H. Auden refers to the Scissor-Man in his 1930 poem "The Witnesses" :
Adolf Hitler was parodied as a Struwwelpeter caricature in 1941 in a book called Struwwelhitler, published in Britain under the pseudonym Dr. Schrecklichkeit.
The "Story of Soup-Kaspar" is parodied in Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking, with a tall story about a Chinese boy named Peter who refuses to eat a swallow's nest served to him by his father, and dies of starvation five months later.
English illustrator Charles Folkard's imaginative study "A Nonsense Miscellany," published in 1956 in Roger Lancelyn Green's anthology The Book of Nonsense, by Many Authors, is a seaside scene that incorporated Baron Munchausen, Struwwelpeter, and a variety of characters from the works of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.
Jamie Rix said that the book inspired him to create Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids when his publisher asked him to write more short stories about rude children. His mother had given him the book as a child and the stories gave him nightmares. Rix wanted to create a similar series of books for his children's generation.
Der Fall Struwwelpeter, 1989, by Jörg M. Günther is a satirical treatment in which the various misdeeds in the story - both by the protagonists and their surroundings - are analyzed via the regulations of the German Strafgesetzbuch.
The Jasper Fforde fantasy/mystery novel The Fourth Bear opens with a police sting operation by the Nursery Crime Division to arrest the Scissorman.