December 11, 2003
Struwwelpeter
struwwelpeter
I think this is the introduction to the first of a series on trauma. Maybe I'll use Struwwelpeter illustrations to label them so you can skip if you're not interested. That would also release me from finding photos for the text. Counterproductive, since I use photography to help me scan for beauty, rather than danger. A blog project emerges. I hope I remember.
Struwwelpeter (translated from the German, Sloppy Peter) was a feature of my childhood. It painted possiblities for my future; it tainted possiblities for my future. It was read to me in English and, most ominously, German.
Struwwelpeter tells cautionary tales of disobedient children and their bloodcurdling fates. It lacks the charms of grimmest fairy tales, since there are only two figures, sometimes only one, with whom to identify-- no fairygodmother, no handsome prince, not even a frog. There is a naughty child alone, with an adult, or, simply, with fate. Having erred, the child faces the consequences. For example, falling off a cliff, for not paying attention; burning alive, leaving only red shoes, for playing with matches; and, my favorite, the amputation of both thumbs by the room-sized tailor with room-sized scissors (without anesthesia), for thumbsucking. That one must be especially disturbing to little boys.
This book is an example of childrearing by terror. Tales like this produce obedient children, who often identify with the aggressor. Alice Miller ("For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childrearing and the Roots of Violence" also "Thou Shalt not be Aware") would argue that little lessons like these ultimately produced the Third Reich.
Personally, I did not have it in me to identify with the aggressor. I was just scared. My mother and my aunt were raised with Struwwelpeter, and thought it was funny. Perhaps they identified with the aggressor. I was very surprised to learn that Mark Twain had translated this from the German. Maybe he thought it was funny too.
Do not let your children near this site. Oops, I didn't mean my site. I meant the Struwwelpeter site, or the book for that matter. That was an interesting slip.