Socialism In Hansel And Gretel

During the course of World War II, socializing children into the wartime culture was a goal of the German society. The Grimm Brothers lade down the foundation for the stories that the Germans later altered to help both children and adults confront the reality of the world they were living in during the war. The original stories published in the “Grimm Fairy Tales” established the strong roots of German nationalism and discrimination against foreigners. The Grimm brothers approached the goal of a unified Germany by promoting a national identity based on the purity of German blood. A century later when World War II began, the set up for Nazi propaganda created by the Grimm brothers was not ignored.

After the end of World War II many people believe

The stepmother of Hansel and Gretel is the seen as an evil and tempered character who persuades the father to break up the family by forcing the children out of the house when a famine hits the countryside. The role which the stepmother plays, “aligns her with a number of stereotypes which would be active in the minds of a German audience in the run up to WWII, during which Jews were regularly charged with seducing innocent Germans to engage in any number of nefarious plots designed to weaken the homeland” (Scott Harshbarger, Grimm and Grimmer). The story also includes the idea of disobedience being a negative distinguishing tendency a child should behave in by having the children obey the mother and father when they say they are going to into the forest to fetch wood, even after they knew their true fate. The story of Hansel and Gretel was successful in developing obedience as a desired trait people should have by creating a situation where the children where forced into acceptance and submissiveness by fear of what the authority or in this case, the stepmother would do to them. This idea of obedience through fear was an idea that the Nazi’s often used during their time in

The Grimms claimed that all the storied within their novel “Grimm Fairy tales” were original to traditional folk tales found in Germany. With their novel, the Grimm brothers laid the foundation for Germany’s national identity and pushed the separated country to unite due to the power of a common reading experience that children and adults throughout Germany experienced. However the identity that the Grimm’s developed in their volumes of fairy tales showed ideas of discrimination, violence and cruelty towards foreigners. Although these thoughts of foreigners was helpful to unite the country during the time that stories were originally published, during World War II the Nazi’s took the stories to publicize their incorrect and hateful ideas of foreigners. The purity of German blood that was once seen as a good message in Germany during the time of Jacob and Wilhelm was seen negatively a century later during the reign of the Nazi power. Due to the new way of reading and interpreting Grimm fairy tales that the Nazi’s spread during World War II many people now view the tales as harmful to the mental development of children. Although it is still in question as to whether or not it would be beneficial to continue to educate children through fairy tales published