Friedemann Kohler -
Once upon a time there were four animals — a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster — who set out to find a better life for themselves as musicians in a northern German city.
It was precisely 200 years ago, on March 3, 1819, that the Brothers Grimm first included the Bremen Town Musicians in the second edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, under the German title Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten. The tale has since travelled the world and been translated into many languages. There is a Russian animated film with the name Bremenskie Muzykanty and there are sculptures in places as far afield as Rigain Latvia and in Osaka in Japan.
The four have long been an emblem of the city itself, drawing domestic and foreign tourists alike to the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, as it styles itself.
This year the celebrations are to stretch on through the entire summer.
“The Bremen Town Musicians are more modern than ever,” says Mayor Carsten Sieling. “They symbolise openness to the world, solidarity, hospitality, creativity and optimism about the future.” In fact, the animals never got as far as Bremen. The farm animals are all worn out from long years of work and are at the end of their useful lives. The donkey is exhausted from carrying sacks, the dog weak from hunting, the cat is to be drowned, and the rooster is being readied for the pot.
The four run away, arriving at a house in the woods occupied by a band of robbers. Their first concert is a runaway success. The robbers flee in panic.
The robbers’ attempt to take back their house also fails, and the animals take over to end their days in peace. They have reached their goal.
The tale “is among the best-known fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm,” in the view of Bernhard Lauer, head of the Brothers Grimm Society in Kassel, the city where the tales were first published.
The message is a humane one: “The poor, the weak, the neglected are also able to achieve their ends with wit and intelligence,” Lauersays.
It is unusual for a specific city to be named in a fairy tale and raises the question, why the animals wanted to travel to Bremen.
“Something better than death we can find anywhere,” is the way the donkey curtly explains the destination to the rooster.
The version put out by Bremen’s public relations department is as ofter one: “Come with us to Bremen; you won’t very easily find anything better.” Lauer notes that “Bremen was a city with Hanseatic freedoms. It could just as easily have been Amsterdam or Hamburg.” The geographical location that the brothers drew their tales from provide the clue. The tales derive from eastern Westphalia and northern Hesse. The route down the Weser River to the port lay open.
Whatever happened in the story, the animals have finally arrived in the city in real life, at least in the form of a bronze sculpture by Gerhard Marcks (1889-1981) right next to the city hall, where tourists now have to queue up to have their pictures taken along side the animal pyramid.
The donkey’s hooves have been polished smooth — touching them is said to be lucky. Half the souvenirs on offer in the nearby shops in the picturesque Old Town on the banks of the river are devoted to the musicians.
The animals, with the donkey at the bottom and the rooster at the top, adorn mugs, pendants, T-shirts and lollies. They are on offer as wooden toys and as the fairy tale itself in book form.
The Town Musicians Summer kicks off on Sunday with a concert in the St Stephani Church. From March 23 to September 1, the Kunsthalle art museum is putting on the exhibition “Animal Revolt — 200 years of Bremen Town Musicians in Art, Kitsch and Society”.
There will be concerts, street theatre, a festival of street musicians and a new animated film entitled The Fabled Four. The Grimm Society is putting on its own exhibition from May 2 in Kassel, from where it will travel through Germany before going abroad. — dpa
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