Dictionary of Demography: Vol. 2. Terms, Concepts, and Institutions N-Z Book

Der Struwwelpeter is one of those picture books I grew up with, and read and heard repeatedly as a child, so I have an unreasonable amount of love for it, even though it's kind of awful? All credit goes to my German-speaking mom, although I'm not sure if she shared this book with my siblings and me because she thought it was a funny book or was trying to scare us straight.

This German children's picture book with moral lessons in poems was first published in 1845, when society (particularly in Germany, I suspect) was much in the mode of "spare the rod and spoil the child." No children being spoiled here! There are ten stories, pretty much all intended to show the horrible things--maiming, death, etc.--that will happen if you are a disobedient or misbehaving child. For example:

In "Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug" ("The Very Sad Story with the Match"), a girl plays with matches and is burned to death. A pile of ashes is all that remains of her. Her cats (who tried to warn her to stay away from the matches) are crying a river of tears.

Just like my cat would if anything ever happened to me, I'm very sure.

In "Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher" ("The Story of the Thumb-Sucker")--my favorite as a child!--the mother warns her son Konrad not to suck his thumbs, or the tailor (literally, the "cutter"), who apparently has nothing better to do than snoop around looking for thumb-sucking children, will come and snip them right off. But as soon his mother leaves the house, pop! Konrad's thumb goes right back into his mouth. Suddenly this huge tailor leaps into the room and cuts off his thumbs with a giant scissors! Bam!!

The last picture shows Konrad standing there sadly, with little stumps where his thumbs used to be.

Good times!

And so it goes. It's even a tiny bit liberal for its time: There's a story about a guy hunting rabbits where a hare grabs the gun while he's asleep and turns it on him.

HAH! Take that!

And another story where three boys who are making fun of an African's dark skin are dipped in ink by a giant, stern St. Nicholas so they can find out what it really means to be black.

This line from the Wikipedia article on this book cracks me up:Hoffmann wrote Struwwelpeter in reaction to the lack of good children's books. Intending to buy a picture book as a Christmas present for his three-year-old son, Hoffmann instead wrote and illustrated his own book.Okay, I thought this was hilarious as a child, but I'm not sure sharing it with a 3 year old is the way to go. But there it says, right on the title page: "Funny stories and droll pictures, for children 3-6 years old." ("Lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder für Kinder von 3 bis 6 Jahren.") Just for the record, I do NOT recommend this for sensitive little ones. But maybe if you've got a rowdy 5 or 6 year old ....

Anyway, this poetry book is a classic, in its own weird and gruesome way. And I read it many, many times as a child, and I turned out fine! (SHUT UP!)

Here's a link to the original German version, free on Project Gutenberg, and here's another link to an English translation that's pretty good, if rather loose.