Fear Factor

Terrifying children's tales from Der Struwwelpeter still resonate today

I was a thumb-sucker as a toddler. I would snuggle with a diaper against my left cheek, right thumb in mouth. Very soothing. My mother, however, was not thrilled. Her solution, she told me years later, was to cut down the size of my snuggly diaper a little at a time, until it was so small that I just gave up the habit. I have no recollection of this, and I still wonder how I never noticed. But apparently her strategy worked.

My mother and grandparents came to the U.S. from Germany in 1936, to escape the Nazis. Mom was loving but strict, and given to bare-bottom spankings when I got out of line. So the diminishing diaper was one of her kinder, gentler corrective strategies. Fortunately for me, she chose not to fall back on a classic German story about the inevitable fate of thumb-suckers, to scare me enough to stop.

In Der Struwwelpeter (Shock-headed Peter) by Heinrich Hoffmann, a boy is warned by his mother not to suck his thumb when she goes out. Of course, he pops it in as soon as she leaves. Into the house rushes a tailor with a giant pair of scissors, who—klipp und klapp—cuts off not one, but both of the boy’s thumbs. Yikes.

I recently discovered this story while delving into cultural touchstones of German children’s literature, part of my deep dive research for Novel 2, which is set in Weimar Germany. The question I’m trying to answer is how these stories, known to most Kinder of that period, would have affected their values, thoughts, and actions. Call it character research. I’m back to writing, slowly, after a year’s pause from a 70,000 word false start, mining what I wrote previously while developing a new narrative and deepening my understanding of my protagonists.

Even as my mother, fortunately, never treated me to the terrifying morality tales of Der Struwwelpeter, there is something about their tone and story arc that resonates at a primal level. As I said, she was strict, and even if she never made such dire threats, somehow I believed really bad things would befall me if I misbehaved.

Mid-19th-century German children’s stories abound in darkness. The first two volumes of the Brothers Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales) were published in 1812 and 1815, and the final, seventh edition came out in 1857. The fiendish escapades of Max und Moritz first appeared in 1865. The first edition of Hoffman’s Der Struwwelpeter was published in 1845.

The Grimm’s tales, which include some graphic details of cleaved appendages, had a significant impact on German children’s literature of the period, according to Grimm biographer Ann Schmiesig. Severe punishments were the norm in these stories. Ironically, Hoffmann was a psychiatrist. He worked in a mental hospital and decided to write and illustrate his book as a Christmas gift for his three-year-old son, because he couldn’t find a suitable alternative. Double yikes.

Hoffmann initially had no intentions of publishing his collection of rhymed morality tales, but at a gathering of a Frankfurt literary club in January 1845, a local publisher bought the manuscript. In October, the book appeared at a Frankfurt market as Lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder mit 15 schön kolorierten Tafeln für Kinder von 3–6 Jahren (Funny Stories and Droll Pictures with 15 beautifully colored panels for children of 3 to 6 years), without Hoffmann’s name as author. Multiple editions followed, and by the fifth version in 1847, he finally allowed his name to appear on the cover.

Ten rhymed stories in all, Der Struwwelpeter includes such light-hearted tales as one about a girl who plays with matches and burns herself to a crisp (to her cats’ dismay) and another about a boy who refuses to eat his soup and starves to death. Not all of the stories end in fatalities, but bad behavior always results in some kind of awful but supposedly deserved punishment—debilitating bites for beating a dog, a near drowning for not paying attention while walking, getting swept away in a storm for not staying safely indoors. The story of Struwwelpeter is the shortest rhyme, about Peter who refuses to comb his hair or cut his nails and is disparaged as a slob.

In another tale, a group of white boys chases a dark-skinned boy and mercilessly tease him. They are caught by a neighboring giant who dips them all in ink, relegating them to literally lose their white privilege. While the basic premise of the story is, for its day, surprisingly critical of racial prejudice, the moral still presumes that dark skin is a curse. The illustrations, too, portray the teased boy with stereotypical thick lips and wooly hair. So much for enlightenment.

You can read and judge for yourself here (English) and here (German).

Some commentators have noted that Hoffmann may have taken some inspiration from his patients. They compare the story of the boy who refuses his soup to individuals who have eating disorders. Another tale, about a boy who cannot sit still at dinner and pulls all the dishes and food and linens off the table, onto himself (to his parents’ dismay) is likened to someone with ADHD. Indeed, the character, Zappel-Philipp, in English is known as Fidgety Phil, a moniker that has been applied to people with attention deficit disorder.

For all its gruesomeness—or, perhaps, because of it—Der Struwwelpeter was quite popular. Just three years after its initial publication, the book had sold more than 20,000 copies. Since then, it has inspired countless adaptations and parodies, including plays, films, musicals, ballets, classical compositions, comics, TV shows, and rock music. The Scissor Man, in particular, has haunted poetry by W.H.Auden; episodes of Family Guy, Dr. Who, and The Office; and Tim Burton’s film Edward Scissorhands.

Fear is a strong motivator. Perhaps Hoffmann actually believed that his rhymed stories were funny and his illustrations, droll. But at some level, he must have known what he was writing. He was a psychiatrist, after all. Given the book’s popularity, it’s fair to assume that the social norms of his day not only accepted fear as a motivator for bringing up obedient children, but embraced it.

Which isn’t surprising. Let’s be honest. For all our supposed advances in childrearing and civilization, 180 year later, we’re consumed by social media algorithms that feed on fear to reap ad revenue and culture wars that are fueled by death threats. Fear is the tyrant’s most powerful weapon. Seeing it for what it is—rather than being swept away by the storm—is fear’s most powerful antidote.

Though it may not hurt to keep a pair of scissors handy, just in case.

Image: Illustration from the 1861 edition of Der Struwwelpeter, via Wikipedia