Shockheaded Petered Out: Frankfurt, Germany’s Fairytale Nightmare
We all shared cliched late-night conversations about how The Witch in the original Snow White ride at Disneyland traumatized us as kids. Or how about Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island scene with chained-up children with donkey ears? (As a kid, when I was fueled on a Nerds candy sugar high skipping Catholic school to gorge on cartoons, my minor Pleasure Island, my mom would warn me to check my head constantly to see if I grew donkey ears.) The point is a big deal, we’re all whiny wusses compared to Germany’s Shockheaded Peter.
Frankfurt’s Heinrich Hoffmann (not to be confused with the other Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s official photographer) noticed that his own children were bored with the usual escapist yet heartwarming fairytales.
Rather, he created his cautionary nursery rhymes in 1845’s Shockheaded Peter or Struwwelpeter, where misbehaving children faced horrific consequences, including death, which would seriously alert Child Protective Services in today’s times.
There’s a girl who wouldn’t stop playing with matches that burned to death, a thumbsucker who has his thumbs cut off, a boy who refused to eat his soup who dies but his gravestone has a soup bowl in his honor, a terribly un-PC/racist story of white kids that teased a black kid so the white kids are dipped in black ink to teach them a supposed lesson on empathy, and the iconic Slovenly Peter that is shamed for his slobby ways by being mocked with enormous long nails as a scarlet letter.
Slovenly Peter’s long nails were so iconic that many argue that it influenced Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands. (Note: I was at my Hollywood DMV and there was a lady with extremely long nails, and they do not extend like Slovenly Peter but instead twist and curl like a keratin version of curly fries.)
I was unaware of these stories until I saw The Tiger Lillies, a British punk cabaret group, do a whole show on them at UCLA. I became obsessed with them and told myself I needed to go to Frankfurt’s Struwwelpeter Museum or Shockheaded Peter Museum.
To get there, you walk through the winding, reconstructed medieval streets (heavily bombed during WWII) past glorious reconstructed medieval squares, including Romerberg Square, where Nazis would burn “degenerate” books back in the day (Shockheaded Peter is not included). Then, you arrive at the museum with its vast collection of Shockheaded Peter drawings, including Hoffmann’s very own sketches.
The book was an international sensation, and the translated versions in various languages, such as Japanese, Portuguese, and even one done by American author, Mark Twain, are displayed.
The book was so associated with Germany that the British during the WWII war effort sold anti-Nazi propaganda versions with Hitler as Shockheaded Peter. (A copy is sold in their Gift Shop !) Those are displayed along with versions mocking Kaiser Wilhelm II as Peter during WWI by the clever Brits. There are also screenings of odd children’s films based on these stories that appear like Pippi Longstocking-meets deranged versions of Mr. Roger’s puppet shows.
Fan art from modern times exists to show its current influences, along with a signed CD by The Tiger Lillies of the show I saw along with a copy of Edward Scissorhands, once again suggesting its possible ties. When I left after an assault of all these possibly traumatizing images, I felt my head to see if I had grown any Pinocchio donkey ears, for old times’ sake.
