78 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox tale “Bennos erste Geschichte” [Benno’s First Story] (1988), a story that also serves as the beginning of her famous montage novel featuring the troubadour Beatriz; 1 Kerstin Hensel’s retelling of the Grimms’ fairy tale “Hänsel and Gretel,” “Da ward gutes Essen aufgetragen” [Good Food Was Set Out] (1989); and Stefan Heym’s “Der kleine König, der ein Kind kriegen mußte” [The Little King Who Had To Have a Baby] (1979) represent a considerable body of new and retold fairy tales produced in the GDR� As part of what Hanne Castein terms the “Märchenwelle” [fairy tale wave] (195) of the 1970s in East Germany, the creation of new tales - along with renewed interest in the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812) - marked a renaissance of the German folk and fairy tale in the socialist state (Castein 195)� Fairy tales represented a type of children’s literature that functioned on the one hand as a state-sanctioned vehicle for ideological instruction, and on the other as a platform for political critique among the authors who conceived new fairy tales or evoked old ones� 2 The historically didactic function of tales that contributed to their acceptance in the GDR was overshadowed by their more subversive elements, which, hidden within simple narratives, were able to slip past censors� Delicately balanced between subversion and education, fairy tales in the GDR of the 1970s became an opportunity for writers and readers to critique the system through literature marketed towards children, but which ultimately reached many adults� The presentation of sophisticated themes through a relatively modest package reflects both the GDR’s serious regard for youth literature as well as the historical development of the genre itself. The concept of childhood as a separate state of being from adulthood did not develop until the seventeenth century, and thus the corresponding need for a differentiation in wardrobe, games, and household articles for adults and children only gradually began to arise. Significantly, one such transformation took place with the symbol of the wooden rocking horse, which had previously held a “ritual function” but which eventually became a specific marker of the children’s world. Zohar Shavit notes in “The Concept of Childhood and Children’s Folktales”: The horse, which had been a primary medium of transportation, lost this function for the adult world at the end of the nineteenth century� It did not disappear from the culture, but rather evolved through a process of reduction and simplification into the wooden horse of the nursery, where it acquired a new function as a toy� Moreover, in addition to this function it became a symbol differentiating the children’s room from the adults’ room, and a sine qua non in nursery furnishings� (Shavit 320) The migration of the symbol of the horse from an element of function to one of diversion illustrates the emerging need for separate symbolic systems between the realms of childhood and adulthood� As the distinct nature of the juvenile “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 79 population became evident, there concomitantly evolved a need for a new and separate literature, including fairy tales as a primary literary mode� Both in the time of the Grimms as well as in the GDR, fairy tales served to instill the lessons and morals of adult society, and their new iterations recognized that children were not prepared to go through the necessary trials to learn them from experience� Similarly, Christa Wolf discusses the ability of literature to play out the struggles of life in her work Lesen und Schreiben (1972; The Reader and the Writer , 1977): [Prosa] kann Zeit raffen und Zeit sparen, indem sie die Experimente, vor denen die Menschheit steht, auf dem Papier durchspielt […]� Prosa kann die Grenzen unseres Wissens über uns selbst weiter hinausschieben� Sie hält die Erinnerung an eine Zukunft in uns wach, von der wir uns bei Strafe unseres Untergangs nicht lossagen dürfen ( Lesen 219-20)� [[Prose] can compress and save time by playing through on paper the experiments facing mankind […]� Prose can push the frontiers of our knowledge about ourselves farther forward� It can keep awake in us the memory of the future that we must not abandon on the pain of destruction� ( Reader 212) And Wolf was not alone� In the 1970s, authors in the GDR seized upon this link between literature and real life in their use of fairy tales as subtly seditious tools, capitalizing on the potential of tales as vehicles of indoctrination. This was key in their eventual acceptance within the GDR, and it also formed the basis for the tales’ own subversion� Following a brief overview of the complicated reception of fairy tales in 1970s East Germany, we explore the three texts from Morgner, Hensel, and Heym as retellings of old tales or as new creations for children (and adults) of the GDR� Through the framework of Bruno Bettelheim and Sheldon Cashdan’s psychoanalytic perspectives of the fairy tale, alongside strains of feminist theory, we focus on how these stories provide tantalizing and vivid images of the GDR as seen through the eyes of their authors, their characters, and their audiences� Drawing also on Karen Rowe’s expositions on the fairy tale’s reinforcement of female domestic roles, we consider how these GDR retellings both evoke and subvert reader expectations� We look to the tale not only as a realm of subversion, but also as a means of establishing connections and articulating secret critiques: in examining these new Märchen , we investigate the function of the fairy tale as a boundary between the real and the fantastic, the didactic and diverting, and between children’s and adults’ literatures� The complicated reception and rehabilitation of fairy tales in the GDR has its origins in the tenuous balance between the tale’s positive ties to the nine- 80 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox teenth-century humanist tradition and its troubling connections with National Socialism� Fairy tales were initially rejected by the staunchly antifascist state due in part to their associations with Nazi ideology. The National Socialists’ abuses of the fairy tale to promote Aryan and nationalistic ideals left a lasting imprint on the German cultural consciousness, and the publication of the Grimms’ tales was banned by the Allied forces in 1945 on account of the disturbing similarities between the violence in tales and the horrors of the Nazi death camps (Arnds 423). The ideological pollution associated with folk and fairy tales after the war accords with the way in which the German language itself was perceived to have been poisoned by National Socialist propaganda� Nevertheless, authors and filmmakers working after the fall of the Third Reich were able to capitalize on these very associations. From Christa Wolf’s treatment of the individual in post-fascist society in Nachdenken über Christa T. (1968; The Quest for Christa T. , 1970), to works by Günter Grass and Helma Sanders-Brahms, authors exploited fairy tale rhetoric and mechanisms as a way of “speaking the unspeakable” (Arnds 423)� Beyond the fairy tale’s fascist associations, discussion also arose in the GDR about whether the fairy tale as a genre was suited for socialism (Shen 6-7)� With its overtly fantastic and magical elements and its emphasis on social and economic transformations, the tale’s very nature seemed to render it at odds with the sober dictates of socialist realism� In spite of these controversies, the Volksmärchen , or traditional fairy tale, experienced a renaissance of sorts in the GDR during the 1970s, paralleling the development of socialistic fairy tales in the Soviet Union� Fairy tales had begun to be seen more favorably in the 1950s and especially 1960s (Di Napoli 297), a shift that culminated in the so-called Märchenwelle in the decade following� Doubts regarding its suitability for socialism notwithstanding, the fairy tale’s inherent folksiness proved largely appealing with modern audiences and the fairy tale axioms underscoring heroism and progress were considered to indeed be compatible with Marxist philosophy� The wave that followed included the tacit recognition of the Grimms’ tales as an indispensable relic of Germany’s cultural heritage and signaled the production of dozens of new and retold fairy tales by GDR authors (Castein 195)� 3 Fairy tales comprised a significant portion of children’s literature and, once they were sanitized and didacticized for young citizens, became ideal vehicles for ideological propagation (Di Napoli 297). This Märchenwelle was not limited to literature, but of course famously also included the genre of cinema, which yielded over 40 enormously popular feature-length fairy tale films produced by DEFA ( Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft ) (Shen 2)� 4 Despite their grudging and gradual acceptance in the GDR, fairy tales nevertheless continued to possess another, veiled function in the socialist state� Tied “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 81 in part to their magical nature, their fascist associations, and to the inherent message reinforcing the individual’s ability to transform his or her own fate, fairy tales would always occupy an uneasy role within the GDR, and in spite of their popularity, their very use signaled subversion� While drawing on the traditions of the tale as part of German cultural heritage, authors were able to employ the Volksmärchen as a vehicle for critique against the system. Thomas Di Napoli suggests in “Thirty Years of Children’s Literature” that authors whose ideals conflicted with state-sanctioned ones more successfully obscured their socio-political expressions within literature for children, an endeavor that might otherwise have been impossible in works intended for adults (294). This subversive function of fairy tales in the GDR reinforces their politicized role, which has existed for as long as the tale itself, but which became more explicit in the early years of the twentieth century (Zipes, Dreams 23)� Authors of new and retold fairy tales in the GDR include Morgner, Hensel, Heym, Peter Hacks, and others, and this trend culminated by the end of the GDR in a wider acceptance of fairy tales, as illustrated in Castein’s 1988 collection Es wird einmal : Märchen für morgen [Once Upon a Future: Fairytales for Tomorrow]. The tendency to incorporate fairy tale mechanisms and elements in German-language texts continues today, with authors such as Hensel, Juli Zeh, Julia Franck, and Emine Sevgi Özdamar� From the 1988 collection Es wird einmal , Irmtraud Morgner’s “Bennos erste Geschichte” is a heavily condensed version of the first chapter from her 1974 novel Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz. Like the novel, “Bennos erste Geschichte” retells the story of Sleeping Beauty� However, unlike the traditional tale of a magic woman’s revenge against a royal’s slight, Morgner presents the story of a young noblewoman, troubadour Beatriz de Dia, who takes control of her own heartache and uses the familiar sleeping spell of the fairy tale to escape the “mittelalterliche Welt der Männer” [men’s world of the Middle Ages] (Morgner 181)� Many recognizable elements from the traditional Märchen remain in place, including the finger prick on the spindle, the castle surrounded by an impenetrable rosebush, and a young “prince” piercing the barrier surrounding the castle� But Morgner transplants the story into the context of a modern, capitalistic world. This new realm is plagued by old and familiar problems, and Beatriz eventually makes her way eastward to the GDR, expecting to find an egalitarian land of miracles. Rather than offering a simple critique of East Germany, Morgner’s tale subverts the roles of gender and patriarchal structures, thereby offering up the ideal of the brighter world possible through socialism. Morgner’s brief tale addresses themes of sacrifice, capitalism, and equality, employing the familiar fairy tale structure in order to transmit a political message. After falling for a philistine from her own time who breaks her heart, 82 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox Beatriz employs a magic woman to help her escape the world of the patriarchy� For each year of enchanted sleep, Beatriz must “pay” seven talents, and the enormously gifted troubadour earns herself 800 years, whereas the Grimms’ heroine received only 100 years of beauty rest� In order to complete the spell and ultimately reach her goal, Beatriz, like Sleeping Beauty, must prick her finger on a spindle that puts her into a long sleep, a sacrifice of blood and time to ensure her entry into a more enlightened state. The use of the spindle to draw blood represents the concession necessary for Beatriz to eventually reach the GDR, a place where she can escape the capitalistic and patriarchal oppression of the Middle Ages. The carryover of this symbolism still speaks to the simple, black and white moral of the Grimm Brothers’ tale, but it imbues Morgner’s text with a subtler message reinforcing the necessity of sacrifice, a common motif in socialist narratives, to escape capitalism� Like Sleeping Beauty, Beatriz only stirs from her lengthy slumber when the rosebush surrounding her castle is breached� She awakens, however, not in the fairy tale land of her dreams, but instead in France in May 1968, an area rife with civil unrest in violent opposition to capitalism� Further, it is not a prince’s kiss that rouses her, but rather the incensed cursing of an engineer charged with building an interstate through the countryside� In pursuit of capitalistic goals, the engineer endeavors to blast through the hill encasing Beatriz’s castle� Before he can set the blast, however, the rose thorns magically open into a door� While in the throes of dedication to his industrial task, even the miracle of a retreating rosebush fails to impress; he is only concerned with the paperwork and delays heralded by the castle’s sudden emergence� Blinded by his obsession with work, the engineer, mirroring the philistine from Beatriz’s old life, is unable to appreciate the troubadour and her songs� Like Sleeping Beauty, who “makes a blind commitment to the first prince who happens down the highway, penetrates the thorny barriers, and arrives deus ex machina to release her” (Rowe 217), Beatriz also immediately falls in love with the engineer, although, as we will see, her happy ending is not with him� While Morgner’s fairy tale glides over the details, the scene of Beatriz’s discovery in her castle bedroom is less innocent than it may appear at first glance, indeed drawing on a narrative tradition of rape� Following Walter Burkert’s notion of the “Maiden’s Tragedy,” a type of narrative mode that dates back to antiquity and features a female protagonist, a scene of forcible entry and rape constitutes the third stage of the heroine’s journey (71)� In his book Creation of the Sacred (1996), 5 Burkert describes the five stages that comprise this type of “female fairy tale”: her break from home, a period of isolation, the first (often violent) sexual encounter, a time of intense suffering, and finally salvation through the birth of a (male) child (71)� While fairy tales such as “Sleeping “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 83 Beauty” and “Rapunzel” do not explicitly narrate the third station of the tale, namely the experience of sexual aggression, Burkert points out that this stage indeed represents a scene of rape (71)� Morgner does not overtly mention Beatriz’s rape in her condensed fairy tale published in 1989, but she does provide an explicit account of rape in her 1974 novel about the troubadour� In a scene shortly after waking in France, Beatriz hitches a ride to the Tarascon commune and is violently attacked by the driver: Da schlug ihr der Mann die Lippen blutig, überwältigte sie mit dem Gewicht seines fetten Leibes, beschimpfte sie unflätig und erleichterte dabei seinen Beutel. Wie man eine Notdurft verrichtet. (Morgner, Abenteuer 27) [At that, the man struck her on the mouth so hard it bled, overpowered her with the weight of his fat body, called her vile names, and emptied his pouch� As if relieving himself� [Morgner, Adventures 14) Through this dehumanizing encounter, Beatriz’s fairy tale progression accords to a certain extent with Sleeping Beauty’s. Yet while the latter’s rape is symbolized both by the prick of the enchanted spindle as well as by the prince’s forced entry through the rose bush, the attack on Beatriz is related in gritty detail. Their stories also differ in their endings: whereas Sleeping Beauty completes these stages and marries her prince, Beatriz grows disenchanted with the engineer, her latest “rescuer,” who, like the philistine of her own time, does not appreciate her talents and refuses to tolerate her voluble singing� She makes the concrete decision to move eastward, despite the threats that await her on her journey� The discrepancy depicted in Morgner’s two narratives, a tale for children and a novel for adults, illustrates the ways in which the fairy tale genre handles mature topics� Morgner draws on the traditions of a tale as a duplicitous literary mode: through it, she speaks to both children and adults, but her message varies according to the symbolic systems recognized by her audience� Adults familiar with the metaphorical equivalents of rape in fairy tales, such as enchanted spindles and poisoned apples, grasp this aspect immediately, whereas a child listener might perceive only the banal interactions between Beatriz and her bumbling interlocuter� Beyond its narration of the protagonist’s narrative progression, Burkert’s “Maiden’s Tragedy” also illustrates the dependence linking the traditional fairy tale heroine to the men in her life, and it casts a contrasting analogue to Morgner’s Beatriz� Unlike the princess who submits to patriarchal norms in order to receive romantic love and both social and financial security, 6 Morgner’s heroine, who had been married centuries ago and found the union wanting, refuses to accept the domestic roles of wifehood and motherhood. The man who wakes 84 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox her, driven by the same system of capitalism condemned by student protestors in Paris and across Western Europe, endeavors to trap Beatriz in marriage and submission, but her ultimate refusal of him breaks with this fairy tale tradition and leads her down a new path� By granting her protagonist an alternative besides marriage to her aggressor, Morgner suggests a new type of empowerment available to women in societies, more precisely in socialist societies, which allows them to support themselves. By removing the financial fetters of marriage, the narrative allows Beatriz to choose her own path and, in so doing, reach her own kind of freedom� Like the heroines who came before her, Beatriz exemplifies the fairy tale impulse to cross boundaries and discover new lands. The difference in this tale is that it ends not in a marriage or return home, as do traditional tales featuring female heroines, but rather in the breach of a new frontier� It is in fact not only the would-be prince and the domestic roles implicated by his offer of marriage that Beatriz spurns� Indeed, the land, more precisely the capitalist land itself that greets her upon waking, is not what she had dreamed� As in the Middle Ages she left behind, Beatriz finds herself unable to embody the roles required of her within this patriarchal society, and the disenchanted troubadour makes her way toward a land not of princes and princesses, but rather of salt-of-theearth workers who are paid equally, regardless of gender� Her refusal to follow the “Maiden’s Tragedy” progression and her desire to forge a new path indicate not only a changing of the times, but also of society and location� In the GDR, the troubadour is for the first time afforded her own opportunities for financial and social independence, unencumbered by patriarchal influences. In entering this brave new world, Beatriz has overcome what Rowe terms the “heroines’ impotence” (Rowe 211), a phenomenon whereby the romantic heroine relies solely on external agents and is bound to either her father or a husband by the end of her tale� Rowe makes the argument that, for this reason, fairy tales in a modern society “no longer provide mythic validations of desirable female behavior; instead, they seem purely escapist or nostalgic, having lost their potency because of the widening gap between social practice and romantic idealization” (211)� In rejecting the traditional path to the prince, Morgner’s protagonist seems to subvert this escapist reasoning by critically projecting the desirable female behavior of the GDR� When she crosses the border into the East, she at last discovers a land that appears to accord with her ideals: Sie durchquerte ein Land, in dem Frauen, wenn sie die gleiche Arbeit wie Männer verrichten, schlechter bezahlt wurden, und eins, in dem sie für gleiche Arbeit gleichen Lohn erhielten� (Morgner, “Benno” 182) “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 85 [She crossed through a land in which women, when they performed the same work as men, were paid worse, and one in which they received the same reward for the same work�] Beatriz finally reaches a realm where she is valued, both as a human being and as a musician� A place where both men and women are paid the same for the same work, the GDR seems to embody perfection, 7 especially in contrast to the violent turmoil of France. Through the episode in 1968 France and the peaceful resolution of Beatriz’s story in the GDR, Morgner reveals the true menace of capitalism. Her narrative suggests that any attempts to change society in a capitalistic country, such as the student movements of the late 1960s, ultimately must fail because of the foundational problems underlying the social context of capitalism itself� 8 In this way, Morgner’s tale hints that true fairy tale endings can only come about in a socialist country: “Denn natürlich war das Land ein Ort des Wunderbaren” [Because of course the land was a realm of wonders] (Morgner, “Benno” 182)� Through Beatriz’s successful entrance into the GDR and through her lack of conformity with Burkert’s “Maiden’s Tragedy” stations, Morgner’s text places emphasis on the significance of equality. Beatriz chooses the GDR based not on its name or even on its purported socialist values, but rather on her ability to find work and receive equal payment. The narrative further embraces the message of equality on a linguistic level� Near the end of the tale, she describes the nearly magical atmosphere of the new land, which, bolstered by Beatriz’s songs, has recovered miraculously from the housing shortage that had plagued Berlin: “Sonnabends ermannten und erweibten sich die Mieter ab und zu” (Morgner, “Benno” 182). The same line appears in Morgner’s novel, translated as: “On Saturdays the tenants would sometimes act like men and women” (Morgner, Adventures 468)� 9 This translation fails to capture the double meaning in Morgner’s wordplay� Expanding upon sich ermannen , to pluck up courage, Morgner creates a new verb - sich erweiben , which contains the obsolete word for woman, weib � The juxtaposition of ermannen and erweiben implies an equalization of the sexes that transcends the physical world and brings it into the very language itself� Significantly, however, Morgner’s use of this kind of language seems to draw more on the rhetoric of West German feminism� According to Sonja Klocke in her chapter “Subversive Creatures from behind the Iron Curtain,” feminism in the West focused on the struggle for equality between the sexes, whereas the ideology of the East articulated class over gender as the foundational category of identity (140)� Under socialism, all citizens were rendered equal and women, as citizens, were automatically included� In spite of the author’s open rejection of West German feminist thought, Morgner’s passage, like other works by female 86 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox writers in the 1970s GDR, reveals new perspectives from a female heroine, as Karen Achberger points out in her article “GDR Women’s Fiction of the 1970s”: [Women] heroes mediate a utopian quality; they carry the seed for a different future in opposing the established (male) values of the present and offering instead revolutionary (female) alternatives: cooperation instead of competition, nurturance instead of authoritarianism, integration instead of specialization� (217) Moreover, Morgner’s passage draws on a specifically Western language, which allows the tale to speak to a broader audience and perhaps might even suggest underlying similarities between different strains of feminism. Together with the tale’s emphasis on disparities of gender, rather than class, Morgner’s specific exploitation of this kind of language might indicate the continued need in the GDR for the reinforcement of gender-specific equality. 10 Through her “Benno” tale, Morgner delivers a story of remarkable complexity, but her adherence to fairy tale narrative conventions draws on the traditions of children’s literature and on fairy tales in general as a means of education and indoctrination. The purpose of the folk and fairy tale to guide and instruct children of the GDR was no new phenomenon, 11 but instead represented an evolution in the tale’s function from the time of the Brothers Grimm. Originally intended for adults, the Grimms’ tales underwent a shift toward younger audiences, which resulted in revised and didacticized stories that differed in form and function from earlier versions of their own tales as well as those from other authors, such as the seventeenth-century author Charles Perrault (Shavit 327)� Folktales, despite their early sexual and violent themes, were initially intended for all ages� However, following the evolving purpose of the wooden rocking horse, as children came to be recognized as having different physical, social, and psychological needs than adults, fairy tales eventually became the purview of children (Shavit 322)� 12 As a genre uniquely suited to subversion, however, the fairy tale continued to provide opportunities for authors to speak directly to adults� Perrault’s tales, for example, contain stylistic devices indicative of works for younger audiences, but they also come furnished with “signs” that point to a secret, adult readership (Shavit 324)� This duplicitous nature of tales noted by Shavit also plays a role in fairy tales written and rewritten in the GDR. Morgner’s tale, for example, seems to fulfill its educational role in strong favor of socialism: Morgner’s heroine steps bravely into the new communist frontier and land of wonders, prepared to take part in a nation of equality� Beatriz provides an example for women of the GDR, and by extension their children, to reject the patriarchal ideas of the West and take on the newly desirable female behavior embodied by this dynamic heroine� Whereas the tales of the nineteenth century taught children, and especially girls, the “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 87 value and security of domestic roles, Morgner’s narrative instead emphasizes the socialist ideals of egalitarianism and the substantial duty of the worker� 13 However, in spite of this apparent commitment to these principles, Morgner capitalizes on the fairy tale’s unique critical potential in the socialist state, but she does so in order to subvert the conventions of the genre itself� In criticizing the tale’s reinforcement of traditional gender roles and patriarchal structures, rather than offering a simple critique of East Germany, Morgner taps into the tale’s subversion and imagines a brighter world� Like Morgner, Hensel takes advantage of the familiar in her short text “Da ward gutes Essen aufgetragen,” published in the 1989 collection Hallimasch [Honey Colored Agaric]� While Hensel’s text is also not intended for children, she draws on a narrative and a genre with a traditionally juvenile audience and blurs the lines between childhood and maturity, ultimately revealing the protagonists’ failure to grow up� In the story, Hensel presents a new ending for the wayward siblings Hänsel and Gretel from the eponymous fairy tale� Picking up at the point where the children enter the witch’s hut and see the sumptuous feast set out before them, Hensel weaves a vastly different tale in which the children complacently devour all that the witch offers them and become fat and idle during their captivity� As the years go by, Gretel gradually forgets her original thoughts of escape, and their captor becomes old and blind, forgetting entirely her own plans to kill and eat her charges. After the witch’s eventual quiet death in her sleep, the children discover that a light pressure on the door is enough to open their cage, which had been unlocked all along. They wander aimlessly away from the cottage, marveling at the outside world and at each other, and they find that they do not know where to go. 14 Like Morgner’s Beatriz, whose tale ends in the breach of a new frontier, the children discover themselves in an unfamiliar realm, but whereas Morgner’s story culminates in a firm note of hope, Hensel’s seems to falter� Rather than ending with a traditional fairy tale marriage or a return home, her retelling concludes instead with a loss of direction (Marven 233)� Hensel’s parody, which was written during the final years of the GDR and published in 1989, turns the Grimms’ tale on its head and calls for a political reading. The colorful bars that separate the children’s cell from the divinities of the witch’s kitchen resemble a private Wall, one that not only fails in keeping out what might be read as Western influence and excess, but which also renders the captive children more vulnerable to these persuasions� Indeed, Hänsel and Gretel soon forget that the bars exist, appearing to care only for the next influx of lavish foods, and they willingly offer their fingers through the bars for the witch’s consideration� If one reads the children as symbolic captives behind the Wall, then the witch could be seen to represent the socialist state, dependent on 88 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox a failing system that is slowly becoming blind and toothless� 15 Powerless and inert, the witch has become deaf to the needs of her captives� Her only concern is to wait before killing the children, “denn nichts sei schon fett genug, als daß es nicht besser werden könnte” [because nothing was already fat enough that it couldn’t become better] (Hensel 6), a constant reminder that seems to mirror the path of socialism itself as one of constant progress toward a distant goal. This progress, however, falters as the witch slowly forgets the children and herself� The siblings, as complicit citizens, keep the system afloat until it eventually collapses under its own weight. This destiny of ruin and misdirection contrasts starkly with the traditional fairy tale ending� While evoking the notion of GDR citizens as children of the state, Hensel’s reading also subverts the familiar fairy tale formula and affords her protagonists, and thereby her vision of the GDR itself, a drastically different fate. Hensel’s challenging allegory simultaneously draws on and breaks reader expectations evoked by its familiar structure. The parody capitalizes on the fairy tale as a protagonist’s symbolic path toward adulthood, and it perverts this very progression with a substantial GDR subtext� Moreover, Hensel engages with a literary mode closely associated with children� As a genre with the potential for distinct educational and ideological applications within the GDR, the fairy tale presents a means of inculcating socialist values through simplified morals and repeated constellations of one-dimensional villainous and heroic archetypes� According to Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment , the tale’s purpose was to “carry important messages to the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind, on whatever level each is functioning at the time” (6). The fairy tale thus helps the child overcome and understand not only the physical struggles of life but also the psychological. For Bettelheim, the value of the fairy tale to a child is the presentation of dilemmas, both psychological and, we argue, external, in an easily comprehensible manner that allows children to derive underlying values� In this way, the educational value of fairy tales for the next generation comes to light, an aspect of the genre that helped render it acceptable in the GDR� As an ideological vehicle intended to transmit lessons and socialist principles, the fairy tale proved exceedingly useful for the regime� Like Shavit’s rocking horse, the tale allowed for the realities of adult life and issues within the GDR to be portrayed without directly dealing with them� For Hensel’s protagonists, however, the message embedded in the tale has gotten lost, and they fail to find their own way forward. If the fairy tale can indeed be read as a presentation of a child’s internal dilemmas and flaws, as per Bettelheim, then the individual character deficiency that plagues the protagonists is of particular significance in the narrative. In both the Grimms’ original as well as in Hensel’s retelling, the Hänsel and Gre- “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 89 tel tale presents the motif of gluttony as an inherent personality flaw. In the Grimms’ story, the balance of lack and luxury comprises the narrative’s driving force: the stepmother banishes the children for want of food, a magical candy house in the woods proves irresistible for the hungry visitors, and the witch, intending to cannibalize the children, is herself shoved into the oven in place of her young victims. Hensel’s version also thematizes gluttony to an extreme degree, opening for instance with a description of the rich banquet set out in the hut. The witch herself even resembles food: “ein Gesicht […] wie ein Apfel und Augen wie Nüsse” [a face like an apple and eyes like nuts] (Hensel 6)� Focalized through the children’s perspective, the narrative thus suggests that the tale’s cannibalistic undertones may not solely be within the purview of the witch: the children, too, are hungry� Moreover, the witch, both as producer of these feasts and as animate analogue to her own cuisine, seems to physically embody the sin of gluttony herself. Indeed, as Sheldon Cashdan argues in his book The Witch Must Die , the character flaws marking the fairy tale protagonist take material form within the witch or wicked stepmother herself (35)� In corporealizing these faults in the form of a (female) villain, the tale is thus able to render her susceptible to defeat by the hero, who by slaying the witch may surmount his or her own internal deficiencies (35). If we follow Bettelheim’s and Cashdan’s assertions that the fairy tale presents both the acknowledgement of their flaws as well as the possibility of overcoming them, then the witch’s passive death in Hensel’s retelling denies the protagonists the confrontation with their own inner nature. The potential of tales to inculcate socialist values wavers as Hensel’s narrative grants the witch not a violent death, but rather a peaceful one, and leads her children protagonists into chaos� While Hensel’s text as a GDR fairy tale was not necessarily intended for children, the narrative demonstrates the potential of fairy tales, new and old, to transfer meaning between the lines, to deliver a secret and powerful language concealed within an innocuous package� Her short and simple narrative reveals both the powerlessness of the ill-fated state as well as hopelessness for the future, which seems grim and uncertain� While the children have in fact become adults in the intervening years, 16 they have failed to recognize their own potential� With their own personal Wall now open (and indeed, it always had been), the narrative presents the siblings as citizens with heretofore unrealized power to change their circumstances� By leaving the doors to the cage long open, Hensel’s tale articulates profound frustration with the complacency of GDR citizens in the 1980s, 17 whose abiding reluctance and inaction stalled the social momentum that eventually lead to the fall of the Wall� Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Hänsel and Gretel had possessed the means to escape the whole time, but do not realize this until the end� However, unlike Dorothy and 90 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox other children’s heroes, they fail to capitalize on this unlocked potential. Their deep-seated flaws of idleness and gluttony have only worsened throughout the years, a dynamic that, as Hensel hints, parodies and parallels the inexorable collapse of the state and the failure of its citizens to act� It is this shortcoming more than any other that ultimately prevents any ingenious escape from the siblings’ dark and directionless fate� While Morgner’s text and Hensel’s retelling both draw on familiar source material, namely the Grimms’ tales “Sleeping Beauty” and “Hänsel and Gretel,” Stefan Heym presents “Der kleine König, der ein Kind kriegen mußte” as a brand-new tale incorporating traditional fairy tale elements. It is also the first tale we discuss published in a collection for children� In the story, a hapless king makes futile plans to enjoy his daily leisure, but each morning over breakfast his wife interrupts his reverie to ask what laws he intends to put into place that day� Reminding him of the unfair advantages enjoyed by the men in the kingdom, Frau Adelheid convinces her husband to write into law the conventionally “female” duties now to be undertaken by husbands and fathers, such as washing, cooking, and sewing� Each day the king readily agrees, but she reminds him: “Worte allein genügen nicht, man muß auch etwas tun” [Words alone are not enough, you also have to do something] (Heym 8). The king himself thus goes about his day completing the work otherwise expected of the women of the land. On the third day, the queen broaches the question of childbirth, and the king suddenly finds himself in a predicament: he must somehow bear a child or suffer the consequence of his own new law. Without overt reference to a particular figure or fairy tale, Heym weaves a narrative from scratch, comprised of familiar fairy tale elements and mechanisms. This composition of fairy tale genre conventions engenders certain expectations on the part of the reader, and the ways in which these expectations are met or broken reveal political and ideological implications in the text� As a tale intended for a juvenile audience, Heym’s narrative taps into the fairy tale as an ideal platform for this kind of political and social critique� In the story, the royal pair’s struggles for equality mirror and parody the socialist endeavor to render all citizens equal, a condition that Morgner’s Beatriz simply assumes to exist. Words do not suffice; the king is obliged to go out and correct these errors himself: washing the dishes, stitching, writing notes, and, of course, he must somehow conceive and bear a child. This last, and ultimately impossible, task reveals the disproportions of theory and praxis within the socialist nation. The queen’s demands are convincingly argued, and even signed into law by the little king, but his endeavor is still not physically possible. In his travels to find a solution, the king reaches out to three pillars of civilization: the wise woman, the doctor, and finally the pastor. The realms of folk medicine, science, and religion “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 91 all fail him, but they lead eventually to his answer: a young shepherd girl with the down-to-earth knowledge of the world that the king lacks� With her aid, the king is indeed able to return to his kingdom with a child of his own making� In highlighting the gender dynamic and cultural hierarchy privileging males, Heym points to a significant instance of inequality in the socialist realm while also offering a preposterous solution. The queen aptly calls attention to the unfair situation faced by the women in the kingdom, but her suggested resolution, namely declaring all domestic tasks now to be the purview of men, is equally flawed. Rather than destabilizing the gender roles that had for centuries marginalized and disenfranchised the kingdom’s women, the queen proposes to invert these roles instead, maintaining the same power structures that grant power and agency to one gender and render the other defenseless� In contrast to Morgner’s imagined GDR, posited as a land in which proletarian solidarity and equality overcome the prejudices of its inhabitants and even “die Barriere der Familie” [the barriers of the family] (Morgner, “Benno” 182) itself, Heym’s narrative presents a society still deeply cloven by the male-female duality� Even as fundamental gender roles are reversed on the little king’s orders, the categories of male and female, subject and object remain firmly in place. These artificial binaries lie at the heart of society’s crises, both in the traditional gender roles and also in the queen’s suggested structural improvements. This, of course, presents a dilemma for the king, who quite ably manages the washing and the sewing but cannot himself conceive a child� As a solution, Heym’s narrative introduces the heroic, salt-of-the-earth shepherd girl, who willingly enough agrees to help the king produce a child, though the method of this production is - appropriately for this genre - left unstated. Through this resolution, the tale suggests that true success derives from cooperation between men and women rather than the domination of one over the other� Interestingly, despite this move to abolish power structures between the sexes, the traditional gender and social roles do not change much at the end of the story: the king still maintains authority over his land, while the shepherd girl bears his child and makes his daily breakfast� Nevertheless, the tale’s conclusion reinforces the socialist practice of working together toward a common goal, with the emphasis on the prevailing role of the people as a whole� Unlike Hensel’s story with its evil witch, Heym’s tale lacks a powerful foe to be defeated at the end. As a scheming and ostensibly barren wife, Queen Adelheid plays the role of antagonist, embodying the displeasing characteristics to which young readers should not aspire� Like her villainous fairy tale analogues, she sets herself apart from the innocent maiden and from the story’s target audience� Rowe remarks: “Because cleverness, willpower, and manipulative skill are aligned with vanity, shrewishness, and ugliness, […] odious females hardly 92 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox recommend themselves as models” (218)� Adelheid does nothing in the tale but speak, and indeed, to her the narrator devotes the last remark: “und wenn sie nicht gestorben ist, redet sie noch heute” [and she talked happily ever after] (Heym 18)� She seems to represent the most disagreeable kind of theorist, the one who talks and talks but herself accomplishes nothing� Her role as a purveyor of empty words places her at odds with the simple farm girl, who, rather than merely talking, instead works to bear the fruit of her physical labor. One can read the figure of Adelheid as a symbol of the GDR’s official position on gender inequality, which, according to Klocke, was claimed to have been handily eliminated under the advent of socialism, in conjunction with the more pressing concerns of class differences (“Subversive Creatures” 143). Constantly speaking instead of acting, Adelheid can be read potentially as a critique of West German feminists who do the same. The queen’s constant flow of words seems to resemble the magical incantations of a witch, but her blank articulations steadily lose their power in the face of the concrete socialist values embodied by the farm girl� Unlike fairy tale witches, who tend to die violently at the tale’s conclusion, Adelheid lives to found her own society where she continues to speak to this day. Nevertheless, Bettelheim’s reading of the fairy tale as the arena for the child reader’s confrontation with inner flaws seems to remain true in Heym’s story: while Adelheid is not defeated in the traditional sense, the king distances himself from her and makes a simple shepherd girl his new queen� Although Adelheid emerges unscathed, she has no place in this new regime now run by her husband� Having realized the foibles of his new legislation, the king embraces the folksy methods which Adelheid had erroneously sought to abolish, and thereby overcomes his own deficiencies, both of character and of state. With the emphasis on the disparity between meaningless speech and consequential action as illustrated by Adelheid’s ineffectuality, Heym’s tale may suggest a critique of West Germany, perceived by the East to bear the heritage of lingering fascism even decades after the end of the War. According to Thomas Ahbe in his chapter “Competing Master Narratives,” both the FRG and the GDR sought to legitimize themselves through their own founding narratives of antifascism following the Second World War, “and each accused the other of continuities with National Socialism” (221). The GDR pointed to the West’s enduring connections with the Third Reich and denounced the capitalist state as “the exclusive successor of National Socialism” (Klocke, Inscription 12)� While both sides claimed a consequential break with the fascist past, the GDR endeavored to position itself as the sole truly antifascist state, articulating the West as an entity whose actions did not match its words. Like Queen Adelheid, the FRG’s claims of denazification reveal the discontinuity between theory and practice, whereas true progress, as Heym’s tale suggests, is only made through socialist “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 93 cooperation and achievement. This emphasis on collaboration in the text echoes the push for gender equality in the GDR� Couched in the adjacent impulse toward general emancipation of humankind, this kind of liberation “can only be achieved as a joint effort of both women and men” (Klocke, “Subversive Creatures” 140)� Moreover, this potential critique of the FRG may also extend to the western world’s own brand of feminism, which reinforced differences of gender over those of class� Indeed, Heym’s tale seems to evoke what Klocke describes as “GDR feminism,” a retroactively applied term that sets itself apart from western movements in that it does not endeavor to reverse binary relations, but rather to abolish them (“Subversive Creatures” 142)� While the gender binary remains in place at the end of the story, the queen has failed to redefine it under her own terms, and the king finds success through egalitarian cooperation of the sexes. In traditional folk tales, the stories largely addressed serious themes of starvation, death, violence, and other grim factors of life, palatizing them through the use of humor and metaphors� As a story indeed intended for children of the GDR, Heym’s tale seems to fulfill its educational obligations faultlessly, employing humorous situations and a simplified narrative style to obscure criticism of a complex problem in the socialist state; namely, that of gender equality and roles� As new awareness of a child’s psyche developed, traditional folk tales were rewritten and modified to better suit the child of the nineteenth century. (Zipes, Breaking 18)� In hearing or reading this unfortunate king’s trials and errors, youthful audiences were exposed to folksy values and lessons of cooperation and collaboration, imparting modern values to indoctrinate modern children� However, these didacticized new tales, passed along as bedtime stories, became vital means of reaching not only the children of the GDR, but also the adults� Their ability to sneak through unnoticed and relatively uncensored through the medium of youth literature rendered them especially valuable� In this way, Heym’s and other authors’ messages of subtle, but sharp critique might not have necessarily reached the narrative’s stated audiences, but they possessed the potential to leave lasting imprints on adult GDR citizens: the parents who read these tales to their children� Given the socialist context of Heym’s GDR fairy tale, the protagonist’s role as king is significant. Rather than featuring a common worker or other representative of the people, Heym’s tale focuses instead on a member of the imperial elite� However, Heym’s tale has flipped the traditional gender of the title character. Unlike Sleeping Beauty or Snow White , Heym’s tale puts a male figure in the title role historically occupied by a female royal. The narrative casts the “Little King” as the “damsel in distress” to be rescued, further disrupting the gender roles and imparting another layer of egalitarianism into the tale� Despite this opportunity for gender equality, the use of high-class figures in East German 94 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox fiction seems an odd choice, as the very idea of royalty was seen as anachronistic in the socialist state, and it seemed to run counter to the antifeudal ideology of the GDR (Shen 20)� However, the use of kings, princesses, and princes was not unusual among the fairy tale adaptations in the GDR, especially in the wellknown DEFA fairy tale films. As Qinna Shen explains in her book The Politics of Magic , the omission of royalty from film versions of well-known fairy tales would have attracted attention, given the well-known role that these figures play in tales, and it would distance these transformations from the beloved and familiar source material (20-21)� Moreover, the conventions associated with the fairy tale genre, including repeated and familiar character roles and constellations, comprised a crucial aspect of these retellings, and they served to foster audience recognition and expectations� Heym consciously capitalizes on this discrepancy� While choosing to leave his protagonist nameless, he conceals the German word for nobility, “Adel,” within the antagonistic queen’s name, “Adelheid�” 18 In Heym’s tale, the implications of the choice to focus on royalty are two-fold: First, through his portrayal of these monarchical figures, especially the queen, the author presents a critique of the government and of those in power, rather than of the worker� 19 Second, the king’s tasks are distinctly domestic, which adds to the humor of his situation but which also, through its absurdity, highlights the fact that authority figures are not held to the same standards and expectations as the majority of the people. The king, who single-handedly possesses the most power in all the land, is in the end rescued by a simple shepherd girl� She solves his dilemma not through magical or even legislative intervention, but rather through common sense and cooperation, an unadulterated celebration of socialist values� Did Morgner’s Sleeping Beauty find her prince in the arms of the socialist GDR? Have Hensel’s Hänsel and Gretel learned from their encounter with the witch and will they take advantage of the freedom they possess? Will Heym’s queen ever put actions to words and follow the example of the shepherd girl? While these tales could be understood through the vista of childhood innocence - the image of an engineer cursing at a magical castle is comical at all ages, and what child has never dreamt of a house built of sugar? - they also offer readings relevant for the problems of the adult world� Following the evolution of the wooden rocking horse from an object of symbolic purpose to one of pleasure, fairy tales have made the journey from utility to diversion, jumping back and forth from the world of children to that of the adults� As the rocking horse was used as a tool for the initiation of children into the adult world, authors in the GDR took advantage of the fairy tale genre to serve as a reintroduction for adults into a child’s context� “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 95 Read together, these adaptations show how fairy tales in the GDR exemplify the double-edged sword of ideology: on the one hand, they were used to indoctrinate children, but on the other, they also represented a genre whose ties to German cultural heritage rendered it immune to ideological interference� Morgner, Hensel, and Heym, among others, employ a fairy tale context in their own works in order to convey political messages, signaled both by the subversion inherent in the genre itself as well as by the changes they make to the familiar formula� Morgner’s and Hensel’s transformations both seem to invite and resist political readings, creating a tension that draws in the reader and forces us to engage more closely with the text. Heym’s simple narrative for children offers a rather sharp critique of the discrepancies between the theories of socialism and its often flawed practice in the GDR. At once a positive statement about the power of the people and a cautionary tale, the king’s story transmits a political message to parents, embedded within a seemingly harmless package: the fairy tales they read their children� For GDR authors of new and retold stories for children, the tale’s deceptively simple format serves as an effective veneer for concealing at times deeply political implications, highlighting the fairy tale’s own secret subversion� Notes All translations are our own unless otherwise indicated� 1 Beatriz is the central character of Morgner’s 1974 novel Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz nach Zeugnissen ihrer Spielfrau Laura: Roman in dreizehn Büchern und sieben Intermezzos , which opens with a chapter nearly identical to her 1988 tale “Bennos erste Geschichte.” Jeannette Clausen’s excellent English translation of the novel, The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by her Minstrel Laura: A Novel in Thirteen Books and Seven Intermezzos , includes much of the same text as Morgner’s short tale. There does not yet exist an official translation of the 1988 collection containing “Bennos erste Geschichte�” 2 For more information, see the fourth edition of Wolfgang Emmerich’s Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR (2009)� 3 See, for instance, Peter Hacks’s Der Schuhu und die fliegende Prinzessin [The Eagle Owl and the Flying Princess] (1964), Franz Fühmann’s Reineke Fuchs [Reynard the Fox] (1966), and Heinz Kahlau’s Der gestiefelte Kater [Puss in Boots] (1967)� 4 Many films, such as Drei Nüsse für Aschenbrödel [Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella] (1974), were in fact co-produced with the Czech film industry and other socialist film studios (Shen 154). These collaborations with victims of 96 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox the fascist regime may also have contributed to their acceptance within the antifascist state� 5 Burkert’s text was first published as Kulte des Altertums. Biologische Grundlagen der Religion in 1989� 6 See Rowe 217� 7 However, it must be noted that the idea of equality and the perfection promised by the GDR could also be read as romantic idealization that may never come to be. This alternative reading is supported by Morgner’s novel about Beatriz, which breaks with her tale’s hopeful conclusion and instead leads her protagonist into realms of increasing doubt and uncertainty� 8 In Morgner’s novel, the author describes the plight of Italian communists who make similar attempts to enact change in their nation, but they ultimately fail because, despite their beliefs, they are not in a socialist country� 9 Translated by Jeanette Clausen. 10 In her chapter “Subversive Creatures from behind the Iron Curtain,” Sonja Klocke discusses Beatriz’s oscillating loyalties between Western strains of feminism and a specifically East German feminism in Morgner’s novel Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz � Klocke describes Beatriz’s involvement with the so-called “third order,” or “dritte Ordnung” (Morgner, Abenteuer 29) which “strives for the eradication of gender inequality together with class differences and can be considered as representing ‘GDR feminism’” (Klocke, “Subversive Creatures” 149). In the novel, this “dritte Ordnung” is described as neither patriarchal, nor matriarchal, but rather “menschlich,” or humane (Morgner, Abenteuer 29)� Although Morgner’s fairy tale ends with Beatriz’s entry into the GDR and does not detail her adventures afterward, this use of language more characteristic of West German feminism could indicate an interest on the part of the author in fighting against binaries of both class and gender� 11 While youth literature comprises a familiar trend in the German-speaking realm since the nineteenth century, the narrative œuvre intended specifically for children was not taken seriously by governing bodies until the GDR recognized the potential of the genre for the transmission of socialist values (Di Napoli 282)� 12 Shavit points out that the concept of childhood has evolved dramatically since the Middle Ages� Rather than regarding them as humans with different physical, social, psychological, and emotional needs than the adults around them, societies up until the seventeenth century instead treated children as miniature adults� Birth, life, and death, mirroring the phases of nature, comprised the foundational segments of the life cycle� If they survived, juveniles entered the adult world at a very young age, and they “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 97 were assumed to possess identical physical and emotional requirements as the adults around them (318-19)� 13 While Morgner’s short tale presents the GDR as the best of both worlds, her novel presents at times strong criticism of the socialist state not present in “Bennos erste Geschichte�” 14 “Und da gingen sie und wußten nicht, wohin” [And they left and did not know where to go] (Hensel 8)� 15 Alternatively, this deep-seated gluttony can also be read as a symbol of capitalism; as long as they get their share of food and wealth, the children have no wish to join the world around them. Their captor, meanwhile, representing the capitalist state, becomes ineffective and obsolete. In this way, Hensel’s text presents a critique of both systems at once alongside a distinct sense of uncertainty for the future� For the purposes of this article, we work with the interpretation linking the witch to socialism� 16 At the tale’s conclusion, the siblings look at one another for the first time in years and remark on each other’s appearance: “[Gretel] sagte, wie fett du geworden bist, Hans, und da sah es auch Hans und sprach, wie dumm du geworden bist, Margarete�” [[Gretel] said, how fat you have become, Hans� And Hans looked at her and said, how dumb you have become, Margarete�] (Hensel 8)� Hänsel and Gretel have become Hans and Margarete, but their progression into adulthood seems to be in name only� 17 For more on the political and social engagement of Hensel’s narratives, see Lyn Marven’s Body and Narrative in Contemporary Literatures in German. Herta Müller, Libuše Moníková, and Kerstin Hensel (2005)� 18 Heym is not the only author to reference nobility in a character’s name� In Hensel’s 2008 novel Lärchenau , the protagonist Adele’s name also contains the German word “Adel�” Beyond this allusion to nobility, Adele’s imagined role as a princess and distinct personal privilege as the wife of an esteemed physician set her apart from the GDR’s purported egalitarianism, and this marker of high social status also evokes the fairy tale genre� 19 These depictions that allowed for thinly veiled critique of power structures within the government played a crucial role in East German literature at large� In Christoph Hein’s Die Ritter der Tafelrunde [The Knights of the Round Table] (1989), for instance, the author thematizes the Arthurian Court as an impotent governing body unable to adapt to the changing political and social climate, a prescient vision of the end of the GDR� 98 Melissa Sheedy and Brandy E� Wilcox Works Cited Achberger, Karen R. “GDR Women’s Fiction of the 1970s: The Emergence of Feminism within Socialism�” East Central Europe/ L’Europe Du Centre-Est 6�1 (1979): 217-31� Ahbe, Thomas. “Competing Master Narratives: Geschichtspolitik and Identity Discourse in Three German Societies.” The GDR Remembered: Representations of the East German State since 1989 � Ed� Nick Hodgin and Caroline Pearce� Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011� 221-49� Arnds, Peter O. “On the Awful German Fairy Tale: Breaking Taboos in Representations of Nazi Euthanasia and the Holocaust in Günter Grass’s ‘Die Blechtrommel,’ Edgar Hilsenrath’s ‘Der Nazi und der Friseur,’ and Anselm Kiefer’s Visual Art�” German Quarterly 75�4 (2002): 422-39� Bascom, William R� “Four Functions of Folklore�” The Journal of American Folklore 67 (1954): 333-49� Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales � New York: Alfred A� Knopf, 1977� Burkert, Walter� Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions � Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1996� Cashdan, Sheldon� The Witch Must Die: How Fairy Tales Shape our Lives � New York: Basic Books, 1999� Castein, Hanne, ed� Es wird einmal: Märchen für Morgen. Moderne Märchen aus der DDR. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1988� Di Napoli, Thomas. “Thirty Years of Children’s Literature in the German Democratic Republic�” German Studies Review 7�2 (1984): 281-300� Emmerich, Wolfgang� Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR � Erweiterte Neuausgabe � Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch, 2009. Goodman, Robin Truth, ed� Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory � Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2015� Hensel, Kerstin� “Da ward gutes Essen aufgetragen�” Hallimasch. Erzählungen � Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1989. 6-8. —� Hallimasch. Erzählungen. Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1989. —� Lärchenau. Munich: btb Verlag, 2008� Heym, Stefan. “Der kleine König, der ein Kind kriegen mußte.” Der kleine König, der ein King kriegen mußte und andere neue Märchen � Berlin: Morgenbuch Verlag, 1993� 7-18� Klocke, Sonja E� Inscription and Rebellion: Illness and the Symptomatic Body in East German Literature � Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015� —� “Subversive Creatures from behind the Iron Curtain: Irmtraud Morgner’s The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by her Minstrel Laura �” Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory � Ed� Robin Truth Goodman� Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2015� 140-54� Marven, Lyn� Body and Narrative in Contemporary Literatures in German. Herta Müller, Libuše Moníková, and Kerstin Hensel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. “Es war (noch) einmal”: Grimm Versions of New Fairy Tales in the GDR 99 Morgner, Irmtraud� “Bennos erste Geschichte�” Es wird einmal: Märchen für Morgen. Moderne Märchen aus der DDR � Ed� Hanne Castein� Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1988� 181-82� —� Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz nach Zeugnissen ihrer Spielfrau Laura: Roman in dreizehn Büchern und sieben Intermezzos . Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1976. —� The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by her Minstrel Laura: A Novel in Thirteen Books and Seven Intermezzos . Trans. Jeanette Clausen. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2000� Rowe, Karen E� “Feminism and Fairy Tales�” Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England � Ed� Jack Zipes� New York: Routledge, 1986� 209-26� Shavit, Zohar. “The Concept of Childhood and Children’s Folktales: Test Case - ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ . ” The Classic Fairy Tales � Ed� Maria Tatar� New York/ London: W�W� Norton, 1999� 317-32� Shen, Qinna� The Politics of Magic. DEFA Fairy-Tale Films. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2015� Wolf, Christa� Lesen und Schreiben. Aufsätze und Prosastücke � Munich: Luchterhand, 1972� —� Nachdenken über Christa T � Munich: Luchterhand, 1968� —� The Quest for Christa T . Trans. Christopher Middleton. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1970� —� The Reader and the Writer. Essays, Sketches, Memories � Trans� Joan Becker� Berlin: Seven Seas Publishers, 1977� Zipes, Jack� Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales. Lexington: The UP of Kentucky, 2002. —� When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and their Tradition � New York: Routledge, 1999�