In 1806, the most famous folklorist in Germany was Clemens Brentano. One day he was introduced to two young brothers. Boys had recently graduated from law school were more interested in folklore than the law. Brentano asked if they would help him collect stories from all over Germany and publish them. Yes, you are right! These two young scholars we Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
Grimm Brothers On the Stage
The Brothers sent forty-nine tales to Clemens Brentano. Among them were the stories like Sleeping Beauty and The Frog Prince. But when Brentano did not published the tales, the Brothers Grimm published their own editions of tales.
Back then, which is 1812, the Grimm fairy tales were called Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Which means “Children’s and Household Tales”. So, they were for everyone, not especially for children. Hence, the violent and dark details.
Snow White: She’s The Fairest of Them All
After the Brothers’ deaths, the Grimm’s fairy tales were incorporated into the teaching curriculum of Prussia in 1870. By the turn of the century, the Tales of the Brothers Grimm had become the second best-selling book in Germany. In the English-speaking world, it had become wildly successful as well. In 1900, The Daily Mail of London named it one of the ten books all children must own. And in 1937 Walt Disney began his full-length motion picture empire with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, breaking box-office records and winning a special Academy Award. It is no exaggeration to say that those two young German scholars changed the world (1).
Snow White has managed to become the world’s most popular and beloved fairy tale. However, there is a very dark and nasty legend associated with our beloved princess.
Not Very Snow White
Once upon a time, on one of the long and cold winter nights of 1729, two brothers named Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm set off from Hanau and were about to arrive in Frankfurt after a difficult journey. The reason that took them away from the warmth of their fireplace and onto this journey was to deliver an order they had received from Rudi Völler, a powerful banker in Frankfurt.
Völler had been wanting to do something to spice up his boring nights for a long time. The pornographic stories he read by the fireplace at night no longer excited him as before. This was because those stories had become both sanitized over time and far removed from the new exciting tendencies forming in his mind. One Saturday, three friends returning from a trip to the East told him that rich merchants and nobles there had special pornographic books illustrated for themselves, and when they showed him the porn books they had made for themselves during that journey, Völler knew what he wanted to do.
Jacob and Wilhelm, working as professors in Göttingen, were somewhat surprised by the invitation they received. “I await your visit for an important matter. Sincerely, Rudi Völler.” The Grimm brothers had heard of Völler. But before his name, the rumor that he spent incredible amounts of money for his private pleasures had reached their ears.
Freya and the Snow White
The next day, they were in Frankfurt. Sitting opposite Völler, sipping their cognacs, they discussed the details of the job. Völler wanted the Grimms to write him a spicy story. The price was agreed upon, and Völler specified what he particularly wanted in the story. With the warmth of the advance payment in their pockets, the Grimms set off for their home in Hanau to write the commissioned text. Along the way, they passionately debated on what to base the story’s foundation. By the time they reached Hanau, they had decided to use the relationship between Freyja and the dwarves as the backbone to incorporate the sexual perversion themes Völler specifically wanted.
Freyja was the goddess of love and sexuality in Norse mythology. Most of her explicit songs had been censored. According to the myth, four dwarves named Alfrigg, Berling, Grerr, and Dvolin make a magnificent necklace. Freyja enters into a tough and long negotiation with the dwarves to acquire the necklace and decides to spend a night with the dwarves to get it.
The Grimms blended Freyja’s story with Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Gothic folklore of ancient times, and also added the sexual inclinations Völler wanted writing a grotesque pornographic story called “Snow White, or as originally named, ‘Maria Sophia Margarete Christina von Erthal’ and the Seven Deadly Sins.”
The Indecent Proposal
On that night, as the wet snow fell gently, Jacob and Wilhelm were on their way to read the finished pornographic text to Völler. Völler enjoyed the story so much that he swam in the pool of pleasure the story offered him for long nights. And to expand the pool he swam in, he sent another invitation to the Grimm brothers.
The next day, asking the Grimms who came to him to transform this story into a fairy tale that parents could read to their children without hesitation. The only condition was that the sexual delusions he enjoyed would remain in the fairy tale. The Grimm brothers left Völler with four times the money they had received before. Four months later, parents were reading the newly published book “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to their children who resisted sleep.
Birth of Snow White
Anger, Avarice, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Pride, and Sloth… These were the names of the seven deadly sins in Dante’s Divine Comedy that one must purify on the way to heaven. The Grimm brothers had originally given the seven dwarfs these names. Because Völler’s goal was not to escape sin but rather, like Snow White, to be as soaked in sin as possible.
In the story, when Snow White enters the dwarfs’ house, she sees seven plates on the table and takes a spoonful from each, tasting each of the seven sins and then, overwhelmed with pleasure, falls into a deep sleep. It was a pleasurable feeling for her to play with sins, to commit sin. When the Grimms turned the story into a fairy tale, they changed the names of the four dwarfs other than the lazy, gluttonous, and angry ones.
If You Think About It…
In the Snow White fairy tale, there’s a widowed king, the king’s daughter, namely Snow White, the king’s new wife who is also a sorceress, namely the new queen, and seven male dwarfs. The rest, is the story.
But have you ever wondered why all those dwarfs are male and why a virgin princess sought refuge among these seven men? And also the existence of a prince with an unclear origin who is necrophiliac? Because there’s no satire among these identities, like in Sodom. There’s a secret leaking of identities under the guise of a children’s fairy tale. Just as R. Völler wanted.
And who wins in the fairy tale? The prince and princess? What happened to the dwarfs? Or the father figure, the king, who is thrown away at the beginning of the tale? The fairy tale cannot answer these questions. Is it because the Grimm brothers forgot to write the end of these characters? No! Its just whether contemporary or old, commissioned or not, every fairy tale only requires a sacrifice. And the reader willingly makes this sacrifice.
This tale has been passed down in so many books, imprinted in so many memories… but most importantly, it was quickly adopted by societal morals… Repeated thousands of times, an one then finally, everybody forgets it Snow White was a nasty girl.
Evolution of Snow White
Stories are meant to be told. As they are told, their form changes, everyone adds something and creates their own version. Therefore, the fact that Snow White’s life may have started as pornography has now lost its significance. At the end of her journey, this story, which we all love and attribute its absurdities to being a fairy tale, has become an inseparable part of our collective consciousness. Moreover, with all the new ingredients mixed in, its current state is quite beautiful. In fact, every fairy tales you know has a devistating end. If you don’t believe us, check out this article.
Still, there’s something that can’t be ignored. Mr. Völler, who commissioned an obscene story to be written, wanted it to be made suitable for children while preserving its secret perverse elements, and clearly spent a lot of time and money on this, what kind of a sick mind does he have?
