The forest motif in the german volksmärchen and kunstmärchen

This research explains changes in the role, function and significance of the forest motif in the German Volksmärchen and Kunstm&amul;rchen. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Germany, collectors of Volksm&amul;rchen believed that these tales had been passed down orally through many generations, and had their roots in a Golden Age of humankind. They believed that the "one- dimensional" setting of the Volksm&amul;rchen, in which the magical and the mundane coexist, was a representation of this earlier, "purer" time. Collectors of the Volksm&amul;rchen hoped that by preserving the tales, they were preserving a link to the lost Golden Age in which they were produced.

The authors of the Kunstm&amul;rchen, on the other hand, were trying to show readers a world closer to their own. They portray a world torn in two, in which the magical, poetic world of the fairy tale is juxtaposed with the everyday, modern world. The world within the forest represents the fairy-tale world, and the everyday world is represented by the world outside the forest. The protagonist is often caught between these two "worlds."

In choosing the forest, a dominant motif in theVolksmärchen, the authors of the Kunstm&amul;rchenimmediately characterize the second world as m&amul;rchenhaft, magical and fundamentally different from the everyday world of modern men and women. The fairy-tale world within the forest represents the Golden Age which enlightened individuals have lost, but for which they continue to long.