Brothers Grimm: Religious Elements in Fairy Tales

The Grimm Brothers’ Children’s and Household Tales (aka Grimms’ Fairy Tales) are still famous all over the world. From 1806 on, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm started collecting fairy tales from pre-existing literature as well as from their circle of friends and acquaintances. The ‘fairy tale’ that the brothers travelled all throughout the countryside in order to collect these tales is not true though. Rather, they let people send different stories to them and they then subsequently worked over the given material. The first volume of the first edition was published in 1812 (86 stories); the second volume (70 stories) followed in 1815. The Siebte Auflage letzter Hand appeared in 1857.

In two sessions of our seminar with Professor Renger and Professor Brittnacher we tried to discover the religious aspects in Grimms’ Fairy Tales, particularly in tale number 3 Mary’s child (German Marienkind). This tale is full of Christian elements:

Salome – Transformations of a Biblical Figure in Art and Literature

The figure Salome evokes orientalist images of a seductive, man-devouring temptress. In the biblical source material, however, she is not yet the femme fatale history made of her.  Salome’s transformations and interpretations throughout the history of art and literature kept us engaged for three sessions of our seminar.

The biblical passage where she appears as the nameless daughter of Herodias – the name Salome was linked to her much later by Flavius Josephus – goes as follows: On the occasion of his birthday, her stepfather Herod Antipas desires her to dance for him. The girl’s dance enchants Herod so much that he decides to grant her one free wish. The child indecisively turns to her mother and asks her what to wish for. Herodias, bearing a grudge against John the Baptist ever since his condemnation of her marriage to Herod, tells her to demand the head of the prophet. Herod, bound to his oath, unwillingly commands John’s execution (Mark 6: 14-29).

Welcome of New Member

We would like to introduce you to a new member of our study group. Jessica Kreutz was a PhD candidate of Medieval and Early Modern Latin Philology at the Georg-August-University in Göttingen. Her thesis, entitled “Die Buchbestände von Wöltingerode. Ein Zisterzienserinnenkloster im Kontext der spätmittelalterlichen Reformbewegungen”, is about religious women and their books in the later Middle Ages, represented by the example of Wöltingerode – one of the oldest female Cistercian cloisters of Northern Germany. The manuscripts contain instructions in monastic practice and were made for the nuns’ education. Her main areas of research are the concepts surrounding and content of these texts, which reflect different ways literature is used to transfer knowledge.

Rainer Maria Rilke “Das Marien-Leben”

Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Das Marien-Leben” from 1912 served as prelude to our investigations on the interrelations of religion and literature. The cycle of 13 poems depicts the life and suffering of the biblical figure Mary. Rilke drew inspiration not only from the biblical sources but also from visual art, such as renaissance images of Mary by Tizian or Tintoretto, and the “Malerbuch” from Mount Athos. Rilke’s “Marien-Leben” has once again won popularity with the musical setting by Paul Hindemith in 1923/24.

The cycle starts with Mary’s birth, covers turning points in the life of Jesus Christ like the wedding of Cana, finds a climax in her unspeakable pain about the loss of her son, and ends with Mary’s own death. While the New Testament does not give much information about Mary’s emotional life, it is precisely these inner workings that Rilke intends to shed light upon. The poems’ constantly shifting tone mirrors Mary as being torn between heavenly spheres and earthly limitations. In this opposition one might recognise Rilke’s own reservation towards the humanization of the divine.

24.10.2013/Henriette Hanky

Biblical Figures 19th and 20th Century Literature

Class on  Biblical Figures 19th and 20th Century Literature at Freie Universität Berlin

Thursdays 4-6 pm (starting October 17th)
Room: JK 29 124 (Habelschwerdter Allee 45)

Issues surrounding Biblical references, allusions, and figures inform modern literature in a variety of ways: as a critical examination of religious traditions; as a means to express doubts about God; and even as manifestations of new discovery and revitalization of religious heritages on both socio-cultural and individual levels. We shall examine these and analogous themes in a selection of 19th- and 20th-century literature, engaging with a variety of perspectives and genres. In studying these texts we shall explore both the possibility and the possible impossibility of reading religious texts as literature and literature as religious texts, analyzing stylistic and formal structures, considering intertextual trajectories, and, not least, deducing the significance of the poetic and metaphoric dimensions in the reception of religious doctrines.

 

Summer Break

In the ancient Attic Calendar, the New Year began with the summer month of Hekatombaion, a season of renewal accompanied by lavish, sun-filled festivals: the Aphrodisia, the Kronia, and, most important, the famous Panathenaia, which celebrated the goddess’s miraculous headbirth. In good Athenian spirit, then, we want to wish all of you a restful, rejuvenating, and festive summer!

John Hamilton & Almut-Barbara Renger

Welcome of New Member

We would like to introduce you to a new member of our study group. Tudor Andrei Sala is a historian of late antique Eurasia. He has a Ph.D. from Yale University in Ancient Christianity. At present, he is a Leibniz-DAAD fellow at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz (Germany) where he conducts research on his two current book projects: one on the exercise of and resistance to surveillance in ancient Christian monasticism, and the other on the poetics of persecution in Manichaeism. His further scholarly interests are located at the intersection of literature, social history, and material culture; they span a broad spectrum, from late pagan theology and early Christian hymnology to early medieval apocryphal lore and the social history of monastic latrines.

Security: Politics, Humanity and the Philology of Care

Nihil est pestilentius securitate. – Martin Luther’s warning against security as something most pestilential is motivated by the loss of care (cura) implied by the term. To be securus means to be free from concerns: to be removed from anxiety and fear, from physical threats and emotional upheavals; but also to be unburdened by the very concerns that constitute human attentiveness and vigilance, responsiveness and responsibility. Security promises a life that is carefree, while also threatening to make it careless. In Luther’s view, “nothing is more pestilential than security,” because once secured, we may end up indifferent, negligent, and uncaring.

In his latest book, Security: Politics, Humanity and the Philology of Care, John Hamilton examines the long semantic history of the word security and its varying implications, involving both safety and vulnerability, confidence and complacency, certitude and ignorance. Spanning texts from ancient Greek lyric to Roman Stoicism, from Augustine and Luther to Machiavelli and Hobbes, from Kant and Nietzsche to Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, Hamilton puts pressure on the idea of security, which all too carelessly courses through today’s social, political and cultural discourses.

Science of Scientific Blogging

Dear friends,
I am writing to inform you about a workshop on scientific blogging at Würzburg University, Germany. More and more scientists blog and use other forms of social media as a form of discussion, publication or post-publication peer review. So this workshop is certainly worth a look. Apart from this, you might also want to check out the following blog: http://scienceofblogging.com.

Cheers,
Almut Renger

Date:                11 April 2013
Time:               All Day
Location:       Würzburg, Campus Am Hubland, Philosophie-Gebäude
Room:             Übungsraum 16

For more information, clicke here.

Call for Papers on Messianism

  

We are happy to announce that the Call for Papers on Messianism is now open. In collaboration with the Theologische Fakultät, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Zentrum für Jüdische Studien, Berlin-Brandenburg and the Gesellschaft für Geistesgeschichte/Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, the MMZ in Potsdam and our study group at FU Berlin will organize a conference on “Messianism – Past and Present.” The conference will take place from September 14th until September 16th, 2014 in Berlin. Please feel invited to submit you talk proposals. Also please let us know what talks you would like to see. Proposals in English or German (1-2 page abstract, short resume, references of institutional association) are to be received by June 1st, 2013 addressed to: moses@mmz.uni-potsdam.de.

Best,
Almut-Barbara Renger

For more details, click here.