Margaretha's presence at the court was partially meant to improve the relationship of her father with the emperor and help the release of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, who had been imprisoned in Brussels for his role in the Schmalkaldic War. In 1549, her father sent her to the Brussels court of Mary of Hungary, governor of the Habsburg Netherlands and sister of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. In 1545, she traveled through the Siebengebirge ("seven hills") to live with her mother's brother Johann Cirksena (1506–1572) at Valkenburg Castle, in present-day Limburg, Netherlands. Perhaps soon after, Margaretha was sent to be raised at nearby Weilburg at the court of Philip III, Count of Nassau-Weilburg. īy 1539, Margaretha had a stepmother, Katharina von Hatzfeld (1510–1546). According to Bad Wildungen city documents, she was famous for her beauty. According to Sander, the character of Snow White was based on the life of Margaretha von Waldeck, daughter of Philip IV, Count of Waldeck-Wildungen (1493–1574) and his first wife, Countess Margaret Cirksena of Ostfriesland (1500–1537), daughter of Edzard I, Count of East Frisia. After hearing a tour guide claim that workers in the mining town of Bergfreiheit had inspired the seven dwarfs, Sander set out to prove that Snow White had originated in that area. ![]() In 1994, the German historian Eckhard Sander published Schneewittchen: Märchen oder Wahrheit? (Snow White: Fairy Tale or True Story?), claiming he had uncovered an account that may have inspired the Grimms' fairy tale. These two towns stood out by connecting the fairy tale to local historical figures, namely 16th-century countess Margaretha von Waldeck and 18th-century baroness Maria Sophia von Erthal. As of 2009, the most active and well-known were Bad Wildungen and Lohr am Main. Several German towns have laid claim to the origins of the fairy tale as part of tourism campaigns. This led Chione to openly boast that she was more beautiful than the goddess Diana herself, resulting in Diana shooting her through the tongue with an arrow. Then Apollo, disguised as an old crone, approached her and raped her again. Mercury put her to sleep with the touch of his caduceus and raped her in her sleep. The name Chione means "Snow" in Greek and, in the story, she is described as the most beautiful woman in the land, so beautiful that the gods Apollo and Mercury both fell in love with her. Scholar Graham Anderson suggested that the story of Snow White had ancient mythical roots and compared it to the Roman legend of Chione, recorded in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Scholar Sigrid Schmidt reached a similar conclusion regarding the story after comparing European and African variants. įolklorist Joseph Jacobs, in Europa's Fairy Book, in his commentaries, considered "Snow White" a later tale influenced or contaminated by these other stories. Some earlier recorded tales share elements of the Snow White story, such as the Malay Syair Bidasari and the Italian “ The Young Slave.”īeginning with Ernst Böklen's seminal study Schneewittchenstudien in 1915, folklorists have noted that the tale of Snow White (and by extension, tale type ATU 709) shows a combination of motifs present in other folktales: the children in the woods (ATU 327, "Children and the Ogre" or " Hansel and Gretel") a heroine cursed into a deep sleep (ATU 410, " Sleeping Beauty") treacherous sisters (ATU 510, " Cinderella", and ATU 511, " One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes") a house in the woods (ATU 451, " The Seven Ravens"). ![]() However, this is disproven by the existence of earlier adaptations such as “ Richilde,” a 1782 version by Johann Karl August Musäus. One theory holds that Snow White was an original creation by the Grimms’ younger brother Ferdinand. ![]() The Grimms also knew of eight other German variants. Īccording to Christine Shojaei Kawan, the Grimms' version of the tale combines stories collected from at least three different informants: their friend Marie Hassenpflug and the collectors Ferdinand Siebert and Heinrich Leopold Stein. They completed their final revision of the story in 1854. It was titled in German: Sneewittchen (in modern orthography Schneewittchen) and numbered as Tale 53. The Brothers Grimm published Snow White in 1812 in the first edition of their collection Grimms' Fairy Tales. It falls within the classification of Type 709 in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index. There has been debate over possible origins of the tale and whether it could be an amalgam of other stories, have mythical roots, or be inspired by a real person. " Snow White" is a German fairy tale known across much of the world.
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