Brothers Grimm: Mediating The Macabre
Mediating the macabre through word and image: Brothers Grimm illustrated fairy-tales in the communist Poland (1945-1989)
In the immediate postwar period Brothers Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen, given their appropriation by the Nazi propaganda, have not been looked on with a favourable eye by Polish educators and critics, who considered them too cruel and violent to be a suitable texts for children. When in 1956 the first collection of Grimms’ fairy-tales was finally published, it was a meagre selection of only 22 tales, based on a censored DDR version, carefully purged of the most macabre elements. It was not until the 1980s that a two volumes complete collection of tales was published, and only in 2009 and 2010 a completely new translation
In the immediate postwar period Brothers Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen, given their appropriation by the Nazi propaganda, have not been looked on with a favourable eye by Polish educators and critics, who considered them too cruel and violent to be a suitable texts for children. When in 1956 the first collection of Grimms’ fairy-tales was finally published, it was a meagre selection of only 22 tales, based on a censored DDR version, carefully purged of the most macabre elements. It was not until the 1980s that a two volumes complete collection of tales was published, and only in 2009 and 2010 a completely new translation