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Something that used to freak me the fuck out as a kid
12 years ago
You know what used to freak me the fuck out as a kid? Strewwelpeter. For those of you not in the know, the Strewwelpeter was a Victorian era children's book from Germany all about horrible fates befalling naughty children. Like the girl who burns herself to death playing with matches or the thumb sucker who gets his fingers chopped off by a crazy tailor. It's pretty gruesome stuff when you look back on it, and people love to point to this book as either evidence of the prudishness of Victorians in general or the brutality of Germans in particular. In reality, although the book was wildly popular in its day, there's some debate about whether it was ever really read to children -- or even if it was intended for children. More likely, adults just really loved its grisly gallows humor and bought it, much like today's modern a-go-go hipsters, for the irony. The book's author, Heinrich Hoffman, also seemed to think the book was more funny than horrifying, since he had long observed children's love for the grotesque and violent. You might even say that the book was about as shocking in its day as seeing an anvil fall on Wile E. Coyote was in ours.
But whatever, that's not the point. The point is I lived a large portion of my childhood in Germany where Strewwelpeter was ominpresent. Not that I ever read the book. I wasn't even aware that it was a book. What freaked me out was seeing the picture of Strewwelpeter, completely divorced from any context, slapped up in book shop windows and playground murals. You'd often find collages of popular characters from kids' entertainment, you know, in kiddie menus or carnival fliers, so you'd see Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny standing right next to this HORRIBLE SAD-FACED DWARF MONSTER:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:H.....truwwel_03.jpg
Somehow that juxtaposition made Strewwelpeter all the worse. Who was he? Why did he invade otherwise completely innocuous gatherings of beloved children's characters? Not to mention that half the time the reproductions were so shoddy that I mistook those long nails of his for, I dunno, pins shoved under his fingernails. There's a statue of Strewwelpeter in the center of Frankfurt am Main, Hoffman's hometown. Try being a little kid and thinking that you only had to worry about that awful thing in pictures and then you turn a corner and OH SHIT
Once I figured out what Strewwelpeter actually was, he wasn't so scary anymore. But still.
But whatever, that's not the point. The point is I lived a large portion of my childhood in Germany where Strewwelpeter was ominpresent. Not that I ever read the book. I wasn't even aware that it was a book. What freaked me out was seeing the picture of Strewwelpeter, completely divorced from any context, slapped up in book shop windows and playground murals. You'd often find collages of popular characters from kids' entertainment, you know, in kiddie menus or carnival fliers, so you'd see Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny standing right next to this HORRIBLE SAD-FACED DWARF MONSTER:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:H.....truwwel_03.jpg
Somehow that juxtaposition made Strewwelpeter all the worse. Who was he? Why did he invade otherwise completely innocuous gatherings of beloved children's characters? Not to mention that half the time the reproductions were so shoddy that I mistook those long nails of his for, I dunno, pins shoved under his fingernails. There's a statue of Strewwelpeter in the center of Frankfurt am Main, Hoffman's hometown. Try being a little kid and thinking that you only had to worry about that awful thing in pictures and then you turn a corner and OH SHIT
Once I figured out what Strewwelpeter actually was, he wasn't so scary anymore. But still.
In he ran
The red, long legged Scissorman
Hoffman was right though, kids do love a good scare and being grossed out. I mean hell look at Garbage Pail Kids. I'd rather look at Pete here than most of those things.
It involved a little girl mistreating her dolls and they eventually came to life to punish her. I am sure you are familiar with how insanely creepy dolls from that era can be - crank that up because she had taken rotten care of them so they looked all messed up. It was amazing.
YOU SHOULD HAVE SAVED IT
KRAMPUS !
My fave,,,,,
http://www.jacehallshow.com/news/ne.....d-gorey-style/
One book I recall from my childhood was Millions of Cats by Wanda Ga'ag. It quickly became a cautionary tale about the dangers of overpopulation, and the deadly feline battle royale in the middle of the book was enough to scar any child for life. Children's books just aren't like that anymore, and while I guess I should be thankful for that, I do miss that dark, cynical edge that forced the reader to acknowledge the harsh realities of life. "You're going to have to learn this stuff eventually... why not now?"
I remember Millions of Cats. The idea that the cats could claw each other into nothing always struck me as really off-putting. Maybe if there had been corpses left behind it wouldn't have been so weird!
Anyway... I'd always assumed that the cats ate each other, but you would think that there would be one really heavy cat remaining, rather than the scrawny little ball of fur they find under a tall patch of grass.
No, wait, I meant children's tears.
WHY DO PEOPLE THINK TERRIFYING CHILDREN IS A GOOD THING.
And to make things worse, it's as if the Struwwelpeter was the only picture book with verses available for people who have just started to learn how to read. And if that thumb-cutting mad tailor was too scary... oh well there was still that big book of Grimms' Folk Tales your parents would read you from.
Eventually the short stories which were being read to me got much better and when I finally could read entire books on my own, I gained access to the works of Otfried Preußler and Christine Nöstlinger who both can do entirely without the poisonous pedagogy from the cesspool which had spawned the Struwwelpeter. In 2007 the Catholistanian author Erwin Grosche hopped onto the Struwwelpeter bandwagon and made a
FurryBeastly Struwwelpeter revamp, slightly rewriting the outcomes and the morals of the stories, such as instead of flying towards his doom, the child with the umbrella in the storm flies towards new adventures. Yaaay?Oh, and the German Victorian era is called Wilhelminian era. The type of Wilhelminian prudery can be pretty much summarised by Carl Sternheim's play "Die Hose" and the reactions the play provoked in the Second Reich. Well, pretty much all of Sternheim's works make fun of Wilhelminian society.
Interesting, I didn't know about these knock-offs.
Kauka's publishing company also jumped on the bandwagon of mislabeled Struwwelpeters with Strubbelpeter & Schnatterliese, but whatever those short stories of these two red-haired children had been about, I only remember the introductory rhyme from the Bussi Bär publications where they appeared in. I don't even know whether they were true to their given names (unkempt Peter and chattering Lisa).
You could just slap the word Struwwelpeter or (in the age of "copyright infringement") some other dialectic variant of "strubbel" on your books and parents automatically thought, "this must be a good childrens' book, it has Strubbel-/Struppel-/Struwwel-Peter on the cover." As if Hoffmann himself has punched through his coffin, and stuck his half-rotten bony hand out of his grave to give that book a thumbs-up.
And likewise propagandists even after Wilhelminian times thought, that "humm, if everyone likes Struwwelpeter, they'll possibly like our adaption which teaches children to be good citizens who support our system." Though I have yet to see a copy of the GDR-Struwwelpeter.
I mean, the whole book is disturbing but that image just really really freaked me out. The story itself is very disturbing for a ghost story book meant for children;
http://crappierpasta.tumblr.com/post/30939021505
that is some nightmare fuel there
Yeah, I can relate.
I have no fucking clue why Annie would be telling these stories to little kids in rhyme. I was introduced to this through a truly awful version of it rendered in book form, with very detailed art. This poem about how disobedient children are immediately murdered was read to us at proverbial gunpoint by a nasty old librarian around the fourth grade. It's just disgusting.
What freaked me out as a kid was the cover of my dad's copy of A Wrinkle In Time. I forget whether it was the wings-for-arms centaur or the glowing-red-eyes head that was on the spine, but even when on the bookshelf I'd try to avoid my gaze when walking by.
Another thing that unnerved me? The map of Antarctica. I was big into maps and globes and atlases as a kid (my travel agent mom was the pusher for that habit), yet for some reason I shuddered whenever I saw that continent lurking way down there. Maybe it's that tendril peninsula reaching up trying to grab at South America, I dunno.
A few days later I was obsessed with finding another copy of it once we'd returned back home, but it turns out to be a fairly uncommon book. After a while I forgot the title of the book and even any concrete details of it. It just became this strange half-formed memory of an unbelievably terrifying and strange book.
Fast forward to 2010 and I'm back in Haye. I'd visited the place several times over the years and never run across the book again, having assumed it purchased long ago, and rare enough not to turn up again. Lo and behold though, upon revisiting the same store where I found it before, there it was. The same volume, locked away in a rare book cabinet for years and forgotten about. I told the store owner my story and he let me have it at a discount.
And when I looked through it....I realized the pseudo-woodcut pictures inside were actually kinda lame, and the stories nowhere near as terrifying as my younger mind had made them out to be. Even so, I keep the book in a prime spot on my shelves. I'd say it makes for a commentary on the power and vividity of the childish imagination....but I think it's safe to say I've waffled on long enough. :^P