A Spell on You

We fear the worst for Hänsel and Gretel when they got under the spell of the witch. But don’t worry. The kids know: What spills out of the Knusperhexe’s mouth are just fancy words and a barrage of verbs in imperative. Read an excerpt from my book Die Frist ist um—Navigate the Language of 10 German Operas.

Hokuspokus, Hexenschuss!
Knusperhexe

Vocabulary:

rühren = here: to move
Fluss m = here: stream of magic energy
bannen = to put under a spell
starr = stiff
Genick n = neck
Zauberknopf m = magic button
Tropf m = fool, ninny
lokus Latin = place
bonus Latin = good
malus Latin = bad
jokus Latin = prank

Hokuspokus, Hexenschuss!
Rühr dich, und dich trifft der Fluss!
Nicht mehr vorwärts, nicht zurück,
bann dich mit dem bösen Blick.
Kopf steh starr dir im Genick!
Hokuspokus, nun kommt Jokus!

Kinder, schaut den Zauberknopf!
Äuglein, stehet still im Kopf!—
Nun zum Stall hinein, du Tropf!
Hokuspokus, bonus, jokus,
Malus lokus, hokuspokus!

The spell of a witch is nothing other than a sequence of commands, verbs in imperative, sent out into the ether. When she addresses a child or a thing, here Hänsel and his head, she simply removes the -en ending of the infinitive.

rühren refl. Imperative (du): rühr. In the second stanza, as she demands Gretel not to move, she adds an -e: Rühre dich nicht von der Stell’!

stehen. Imperative (du): steh.

The verb bann (bannen) is short for ich banne. She talks about herself: Ich banne dich mit bösem Blick.

When she addresses both children and their eyes (Äugelein), she must use ihr, the plural of du. For the imperative (ihr) she removes the -en ending of the infinitive and adds a -t or an -et.

schauen. Imperative (ihr): schaut.

stehen. Imperative (ihr): stehet.

She bewitches Hänsel and orders him not to move vorwärts (forward) or zurück (backward). Eventually, she directs him zum Stall hinein (hin describes a position in relation to a movement).

vernünftig = reasonable
Stelle f = here: spot

Nun, Gretel, sei vernünftig und nett!—
Der Hänsel wird nun balde fett.
Wir wollen ihn, so ist’s am besten,
mit süßen Mandeln und Rosinen mästen.
Ich geh ins Haus und hole sie schnell—
Du, rühre dich nicht von der Stell’!

The Hexe now turns to Gretel with a friendlier demeanor, starting with the imperative of sein (to be), an irregular verb: sei. She even uses the first person plural, wir, and wollen (to want) as if she and Gretel shared common interests.

It is best, she says, to fatten Hänsel with almonds and raisins. Then, she announces, Ich geh ins Haus und hole sie schnell. Who or what does she mean with sie? Gretel? Mandeln, Rosinen?

Die Frist ist um
Navigate the Language
of 10 German Operas

by Bernd Hendricks

ISBN 978-1-008-908529

379 pages

$ 28.80

Available at: lulu.com, amazon.com and bookstores

Food Can’t Sing…

…but singers can crave. In no other opera do the thoughts of the characters revolve so fiercely around food and eating than in Hänsel und Gretel. Learn its vocabulary in this excerpt of my book Die Frist ist um—Navigate the Language of 10 German Operas.

Singers of Hänsel und Gretel! Rent a venue, decorate it in part as a witch house, in part as a forest, and on a long table lay out all the foods we find mentioned in the libretto. If there is still space, have a piano and a stool for the accompanist, have the singers perform Hänsel und Gretel, have them sing and act out the verbs of devouring. After the performance, open the buffet and invite the audience to help themselves. It will be a feast.

What Hänsel and Gretel and their parents dream about

Butterwecken m = wedge-shaped roll baked with wheat and butter

Eierfladen m = pancake. Here, the emphasis lies on Eier (eggs, sing. Ei n) indicating that we are well-off when eggs are available to us.

trocken Brot n = dry bread; slices of bread without any butter, sausage, or cheese on top. This term reveals that we are not well-off right now.

Kümmel m = caraway

Leiblikör m = favorite liquor, Leib m = body

Rahm m = cream

Sahne f = whipped cream

Speck m = bacon

Wurst f = sausage, pl. Würste

Sweets at the House of the Knusperhexe

Dattel f = date, pl. Datteln

Johannisbrot n = carob, fruit of a Mediterranean tree

Jungfernleder n = an herb

Kuchen m = cake, e.g., Lebkuchen (gingerbread), Zauberkuchen (magic cake)

Rosine f = raisin

Teig m = dough

Torte f = rich cake often filled with whipped cream, also mentioned as Kuchen, gefüllt mit süßer Sahn’.

Zucker m = sugar

Verbs of Preparing and Eating Food

knuspern obs. = to munch

nagen = to nibble

naschen = to snack, mostly sweets and in secret. Naschen implies something fun. When you discover a little finger-mark running through a creamy cake, you ask your child, Wer hat hier genascht? (genascht: past participle of naschen)

schleckern = to suck on candies, to lick ice cream

schlucken = to swallow

schmecken = to taste

verschlecken = to eat all candies, all ice cream

Verbs of Eating with Incredible Enjoyment

ergötzen refl. = to take great pleasure in food; the preposition is an.

laben refl. = to refresh and enjoy oneself with good food and drink; the preposition is an. Ich labe mich an Schokoladentorte.

schmausen = to feast

Phrases Related to Food

am Hungertuch nagen = to starve; Hungertuch n is a decorated cloth that covers the image of Jesus in churches during Lent.

Ich habe dich zum Aufessen lieb = I love you so much I could eat you. Today, we say, ich habe dich zum Fressen gern. (fressen = to eat [for animals], to gorge oneself)

Du schmeckst nach mehr = You are so tasty that I want more.

Die Frist ist um
Navigate the Language
of 10 German Operas

by Bernd Hendricks

ISBN 978-1-008-908529

379 pages

$ 28.80

Available at: lulu.com, amazon.com and bookstores

When Siblings Create

Two siblings writing about two siblings: Hänsel und Gretel, the work of librettist Adelheid Wetter and her brother, the composer Engelbert Humperdinck, introduced opera to countless children throughout the world. Read an excerpt from my book Die Frist ist um—Navigate the Language of 10 German Operas. Part 1.

Hänsel und Gretel, the opera project, started with a letter Adelheid wrote to her brother in April 1890. Her husband’s birthday was approaching quickly, and she and her children wanted to surprise him with a few songs to lyrics she had written based on the Hänsel und Gretel fairy tale. She asked Engelbert for help. He composed the music for three sets of lyrics she had sent him. It took him only two hours.

Ten days after the birthday party Adelheid showed her brother a developed plot with new ideas. What had originated as a family affair—two siblings working on a musical tale about two siblings—would ultimately burst into the world as a full-scale opera—and into the future as the most successful Märchenoper.

What we see on stage is not what the writers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm had recorded more than seventy years earlier during their research in villages in Hessen and Swabia. For Adelheid, the Grimm version was too grim: the world of Hänsel and Gretel is in the grip of a famine. Crazed by hunger, the stepmother convinces the father, a lumberjack, to get rid of the children in order to save food. They abandon them deep in the woods to die. In the end, when the children return after killing the witch and crossing a river on the back of a white duck, the stepmother herself is dead and the father relieved.

Adelheid gave Hänsel and Gretel a birth mother who sends the kids into the woods to collect strawberries as punishment for dancing and playing instead of knitting socks and binding brooms. As they are wandering lost in the forest, they encounter Sandmännchen, an archetypal character based on northern European folklore, and Taumännchen, a little creature of Adelheid’s invention. By August, the libretto was finished. The rest of the family—their parents and Engelbert’s fiancée Hedwig Taxer—helped polish the text. They also decided the fate of future generations of sopranos. Adults, not children, should play and sing the main roles. Two female voices, a soprano and a mezzo-soprano, would be best.

A year later, Engelbert had completed the score, and in late 1893, the first copies went out to opera houses. On November 22, 1893, three weeks before the scheduled premiere at the Nationaltheater in Munich, he set down the final notes. The rehearsals went smoothly. However, most opera houses hesitated, sniffed at the Märchenoper like a rabbit at a carrot, and waited to see how the audience in Munich would respond. Karlsruhe was committed, Weimar still hesitated. As long as their Musikdirektor Richard Strauss was traveling in Greece and Egypt, the administration of the Weimar Hoftheater was only willing to schedule two performances.

The curtain in Munich did not rise. A flu epidemic had been sweeping through Germany. The premiere was canceled. Karlsruhe followed, out of fear of the epidemic. Weimar was spared and went ahead. Strauss had returned in the meantime, had read both libretto and score, and was thrilled. What Humperdinck had sent him was a “first-class masterpiece,” he wrote to the composer. On December 23, Strauss conducted the first performance of Hänsel und Gretel. 

Once the flu epidemic was over, Hänsel und Gretel began to infect the hearts of audiences. Within a few weeks, it had been played in fifty opera houses before enthusiastic crowds. The tale of the two children brought musical giants to their knees. Gustav Mahler insisted on conducting the opera in Hamburg. Cosima Wagner, Richard Wagner’s widow, oversaw the production in Dessau, and in Vienna, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf went backstage to congratulate Humperdinck.

Hänsel und Gretel strayed into the forest and conquered the world, first in Basel and in London, then at the Met in New York. In April 1907, the Märchenoper finally arrived in the farthest corner of the world, when the first chords of the overture filled the auditorium of the Melbourne Opera.

Available at: lulu.com, amazon.com and bookstores

Soothe Our Pain

The little mountain Ettersberg nearby Weimar saw the greatest of German culture and the worst. Here, Goethe created his poems, and the nazis unleashed their barbarism.

Whenever poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe was searching for inspiration, he would leave his house in Weimar and hike through the nearby forest up to the small mountain of Ettersberg where he would sit at an old oak tree and jot down whatever went through his mind. Here, in February 1776, he wrote the first of two poems, both called Wanderers Nachtlied. Many years later, Franz Schubert set this poem to music, too (see below, sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau). While the later one, beginning with Über allen Gipfeln, conveys stillness describing nature as it prepares for the night’s rest, the earlier poem is a call to God to soothe the pain; it is an expression of longing for peace in the wanderer’s restless heart.

Vocabulary
Nouns:
der Himmel = heaven
das Leid = suffering
Schmerzen (pl.) = pain
die Erquickung = here: relief
das Treiben = here: hustle and bustle
der Friede = peace in someones heart or with God; normally: der Frieden = peace as a period without war

die Brust = here: bosom

Verbs:
stillen = here: to soothe
füllen = to fill

Adjektives/adverbs:
doppelt = double
elend = miserable
süß = sweet

Der du von dem Himmel bist,
alles Leid und Schmerzen stillest,
den, der doppelt elend ist,
doppelt mit Erquickung füllest;
ach, ich bin des Treibens müde!
Was soll all der Schmerz und Lust?
Süßer Friede,
komm, ach komm in meine Brust!

The poem is an appeal. Consequently, it must open with a sort of salutation. The wanderer could have said just one word: God! However, the addressee occupies half of the poem. In four lines out of eight the wanderer describes to whom he is calling out (informally with du), not by name but by attributes and actions—where God is and what God is doing, and who is receiving God’s action.

Where God is: der du in dem Himmel bist = you who is in heaven

What God is doing: der alles Leid und Schmerzen stillest = you who soothes all suffering and pain.

The key for our understanding is the article der. It acquires all verbs—sein, stillen—as its own. We call this “nominative,” one of the four cases in the German language. It describes the role of the noun or pronoun (er, sie, es; here: der) as the subject of the sentence, the thing or person that is doing something (sein, stillen).

The key for our understanding of the next part is den. It indicates that something masculine, here der Wanderer, receives the following action: füllen. We call this passive role of the noun or pronoun “accusative.”

In a relative clause, the wanderer qualifies the object as well: the suffering soul, the one who is miserable (elend). And when life burdens the soul with a double load of misery, the one who is in heaven will provide the double load of relief.

If we remove the explanatory parts (relative clause) we will reach the core of the statement:

Der Gott (the one who is acting) füllt (the action) den Wanderer (the one who is receiving the action). Fills with what? Mit Erquickung.

Ach! Abruptly, the wanderer lets out a sigh, not without employing another case in German grammar, the genitive. Ich bin des Treibens müde. I am tired of the hustle and bustle. 

With the genitive case, the English “of the” translates into des for masculine and neuter nouns (das Treiben) and der for feminine nouns.

We see the wanderer’s shoulders drop, see him sitting down and leaning his head against the tree; resigned, he closes his eyes. Was soll all der Schmerz und Lust?

A question that begins with was soll asks for a purpose, often in a fatalistic mood.

What is the purpose of all this pain and lust?

The poem concludes with an expression of longing we all feel when enough is enough: Sweet peace come, ach, enter my heart.

The great humanist Goethe could never had imagined that his poem could have been the comfort for thousands of tortured and enslaved human beings who suffered at the Ettersberg more than 160 years later. Exactly here, the nazis built the concentration camp Buchenwald. As if they wanted to emphasise their barbarism even more, the nazis built the camp around the very oak tree where Goethe rested, thought, and wrote.

Holding around hundred thousand prisoners, Buchenwald was the largest concentration camp in Germany. Tens of thousands were murdered. In view of the fast approaching American troops, SS leader Himmler ordered the death march of the remaining prisoners. Briefly before the prisoners were suppose to leave, a resistance group of prisoners using weapons they had built themselves or stole and hid, stormed the watchtowers, arrested around 120 nazi guards, raised the white flag, and handed the camp over to the soldiers of the 3rd American Army who arrived on April 11, 1945. And here, the survivors wrote another piece of literature, an appeal to mankind that was read at a memorial event nine days later, the Schwur von Buchenwald, the oath of Buchenwald, that ended with, “The destruction of nazism with its roots is our slogan. The building of a new world of peace and freedom is our goal.”

Today, a memorial and a museum is errected at the Ettersberg.

Goethe Killed Adjectives

“When you catch an adjective, kill it,” Mark Twain once said. Writing one of the most atmospheric, soothing, calming poem in the German language, Johann Wolfgang Goethe followed this advice 55 years before the American writer’s birth. Reading Wanderers Nachtlied in a quiet voice, you will find rest after a long march and stillness inmidst nature but you will not find even one adjective in this poem.

You may have arranged its lines in the correct order with the help of Schubert’s Vertonung* in the last posting:

Über allen Gipfeln
ist Ruh’,
In allen Wipfeln
spürest du
kaum einen Hauch;
die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
ruhest du auch.

Imagine standing on the Kickelhahn mountain in the Thuringia forest at dawn just before sunset. Nothing moves. Even the air is quiet; you barely feel it on your skin. It is not some action you notice first but things: The mountain-tops (die Gipfel) on the other site of the valley and the tree-tops that surround you. You must start your poem with things, with the Gipfel and the Wipfel and with their location (über). The verbs, always appearing in the second position of a sentence, speak a subdued language: sein, spüren, schweigen, warten, ruhen. Although all things (nouns) and verbs express peace, solitude, and silence, the poem is not a static, lifeless creature. It is dynamic. It tells us of a process, the approach of the night, because it is driven by three adverbs—kaum (almost), bald (soon), auch (also)—and one particle—nur in connection with warten; warte nur = just wait.

Wanderers Nachtlied is not the only poem of that title Goethe wrote. Four years before Über allen Gipfeln, during a hiking tour he had jotted down Der du von dem Himmel bist, set to music by Schubert as well. We will examine it in the next post.

* die Vertonung = scoring, text being set to music; vertonen = to set a a text to music (der Ton = sound, tone)