RESERVOIR OF TEARS: Black Pedagogy & Do Nice Kids Finish Last?

“I remember spending afternoon with Mr. Richter in the Central Park Zoo, I went weighted down with food for the animals, only someone who’d never been an animal would put up a sign saying not to feed them, Mr. Richter told a joke, I tossed hamburger to the lions, he rattled the cages with his laughter, the animals went to the corners, we laughed and laughed, together a separately, out loud and silently, we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored, to build a new world from nothing if nothing in our world could be salvaged, it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn’t think about my life at all. ( Jonathan Safran Foer)

Inky Boys. "Hoffmann later commented that, in the past, his talent for storytelling has been particularly helpful in helping him calm nervous children who were frightened of doctors: "On such occasions a slip of paper and a pencil generally came to my assistance. A story, invented on the spur of the moment, illustrated with a few touches of the pencil and humorously related, will calm the little antagonist, dry his tears, and allow the medical man to do his duty."

What made Heinrich Hoffmann’s  “Struwwelpeter” so popular was its content as much as its striking illustrations. Hoffman was a physician who wanted to buy his three-year-old son a picture book for Christmas. A tour of local bookshops convinced him it was a fruitless quest. “Towards Christmas in the year 1844,” he recalled, “when my eldest son was three years old, I went to town with the intention to buy as a present for him a picture book, which should be adapted to the little fellow’s powers of comprehension. But what did I find? Long tales, stupid stories, beginning and ending with admonitions like ‘the good child must be truthful’ or ‘children must keep clean’ etc.” Hoffman bought a blank notebook and proposed to his wife that they should compose their own book. He was used to making up stories, with an appropriate illustration, as a way of winning the confidence of young patients.

"Hoffmann's finished product, completed in 1845, featured five lyrical stories, plus an even shorter poem he titled "Struwwelpeter," accompanied by several comical pen-and-ink drawings to compliment each tale. To highlight the "Struwwelpeter" poem, he created the now-infamous image of Struwwelpeter himself: a wild-haired boy with long fingernails extending out like claws from his hands. The name "Struwwelpeter" roughly translates into English as "Peter in disarray," which, in fact, offers a succinct summary of the poem itself: young "Slovenly Peter" refuses to wash his hair or trim his nails, thus making his personal appearance disgusting. The stories were outrageous, to say the least, featuring over-the-top violence recounted in a light-hearted and mildly reproving tone by an omniscient narrator."...

The expected effect was laughter mixed with gasps. What Hoffmann had not expected was that others would clamor for copies. Or that his stories would be translated into English, French, and other languages. One of his translators was Mark Twain. It could be called an early form of the graphic novel; a form of black humor or black pedagogy whose extreme candor was hardly soothing. The graphic violence was hardly politically correct; but the nature of its alleged violence is not unanimous and may be less cognitively disruptive than seemingly more benign forms of mainstream child entertainment. Perhaps…

Struwwelpeter, seen here in Hoffmann’s original illustration, was a monster such as a small boy might himself become. One can easily imagine an exasperated parent, trying to get a child to sit still so as to trim his nails or wash behind his ears, saying,”If you don’t behave, you’ll look like Struwwelpeter!” Struwwelpeter combined the comedic with the cautionary. As a result, the eleven stories Dr. Hoffmann came up with are notably dark in content, strikingly light in tone — “humorously related” in his own words.

"Throughout Der Struwwelpeter, Hoffmann's tales almost all come to uniformly tragic ends: Frederick is confined to his bed for painful medical treatments while the dog enjoys his dinner; the "Inky Boys" are dipped in ink in punishment by Saint Nicholas, permanently staining their skin; the Wild Huntsman is shot at and almost killed by the rabbit mother; thumb-sucking Conrad has his thumbs sliced off by the tailor to prevent any further thumb-sucking; Augustus perishes from lack of food; Pauline is burned alive, leaving only a pile of ashes; Philip slams to the floor under his family's dinner table; Johnny's refusal to watch where he's going almost gets him drowned; and finally, Robert is swept away by a storm, never to be seen again. Several of Hoffmann's simple illustrations—which he insisted be included in all editions—are relatively graphic in their primitive, cartoonish style."

“I thought about my small victories ans everything I’d seen destroyed, ….I’d left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I’d experienced joy , but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am,I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless. None of my pets know their own names, what kind of person am I? …( Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

“Modern readers might question the appropriateness of presenting such graphically violent tales to children, but in nineteenth-century Germany, such “cautionary tales” were seen as an effective means of imparting lessons of safety and social custom in a humorous fashion. However, that is not to say that certain segments of German society did not find Der Struwwelpeter objectionable for other reasons. The German magazine Fliegende Blätter jokingly called Hoffmann’s text “a pamphlet of revolutionary propaganda” in 1848, though their message echoed the concerns of a sizable group of parents and leaders who worried that the stories invoked a message of disobedience and actually encouraged young readers to emulate the behavior of Hoffmann’s ill-fated protagonists. Hoffmann justified the graphic nature of his stories by arguing that the book simply echoed the perversity and violence inherit in most fairy tales, as with Snow White’s poisoning by her own stepmother or Little Red Riding Hood being swallowed by the Wolf. He later commented, “The book is supposed to evoke fairy-tale-like, horrid, and exaggerated ideas! You cannot touch a child’s soul with the absolute truth, or with algebraic propositions; instead, you will make it waste away miserably.” Hoffmann asserted that, by graphically illustrating the sorts of social dangers his tales addressed, children learn to understand threats to their safety and the needs of proper social adaptation. “

"Children appreciated the drama and child-orientation of the stories as well as their anarchic spirit and grotesque exaggeration; and in the case of Struwwelpeter parents presumably appreciated the ease with which children swallowed the nicely well-wrapped educational message." Ironically, however, despite Hoffmann's own avowed wishes to create something that avoided the overt didacticism of the religious texts he spurned in 1844, Der Struwwelpeter is nevertheless seen by many as overly heavy-handed in its tone, even with the book's remarkable indulgence in its macabre thrills. Regardless of its intent, Der Struwwelpeter marked a turning point in children's literature. It was among the first children's books to present a seamless fusion of text and image, ranking among the earliest of picture books. Furthermore, the volume is unquestionably concerned with entertaining children—rather than simply instructing them—with every aspect of its creation having been implemented to appeal to the interests of young readers. The wryly morbid stories of Der Struwwelpeter simultaneously offered dark portrayals of death and horror that were balanced by the action, zest, and life of the characters themselves..."

Ultimately, are the tales sadistically cruel or humorously entertaining? On the one hand, Dr. Hoffmann earned a reputation as a caring and humane psychiatrist. Further, the German subtitle translates to “amusing stories and droll pictures,” indicating perhaps a more humorous intent. But nineteenth-century society possessed very different notions than we about childhood and child development; children were considered little more than savage creatures, who required strict guidance in order to behave as

lts. Few allowances were made for unruly behavior; beatings were acceptable and routine.

“In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York was in heavy boots. An when something really terrible happened- like a nuclear bomb, or at least a biological weapons attack- an extremely loud siren would go off, telling everyone to get to Central Park to put sandbags around the reservoir.” ( Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

ADDENDUM:
Clare Dudman:the origin of the story of the Inky Boys in Heinrich Hoffmann’s STRUWWELPETER which in the German version features St Nicholas, the predecessor of Father Christmas.

This rhyme is the most contentious in the book and has led to the book being banned in some libraries in the UK. The story goes like this: three boys laugh at the ‘Black-a Moor’ because he is ‘as black as ink’. They are reprimanded by a man in bishop’s regalia in the German version (St Nicholas, perhaps) or by a scribe in the English version and it is this man who utters the objectionable lines: ‘Boys leave the black-a-moor alone! For if he tries with all his might, He cannot change from black to white.’ Which of course implies that to have black skin is inherently less desirable than white – hence the reason for the banning of the book in libraries. The tale ends with the scribe (or St Nicholas) dipping the three disobedient boys into his ink as punishment for continuing with their tirade….

…Hoffmann may also have had a piece of German folklore in the back of his mind too – the idea of the ‘der Kinderfresser’ or child-eater. This is a mythological man who, like Father Christmas, went around with a sack. However instead of giving out presents to children who had been good he collected in children who had been badly behaved, then carried them home in his sack for a nourishing and succulent meal.

In comparison with this the tales in Hoffmann’s STRUWWELPETER are quite mild.

Hoffmann himself is unlikely to have ever seen a ‘Black-a-Moor’ except as exhibits in a fair. He was however a champion for another race which he could see were being unfairly treated in nineteenth century Frankfurt – the Jews – and fought for their emancipation. Within the confines of his time and position in life Hoffmann did what he could for the inequalities he saw around him and these are represented in this story of the Inky Boys.

"David Blamires has credited the flexibility of Struwwelpeter for the sheer variability and multitude of purposes into which it has been appropriated, including a "satirical attack on the danger and disruptiveness of the recently invented motorcar," all of which cumulatively "are testimony to the adaptability of Struwwelpeter and its classic status as an English nursery book. The original pictures and stories embody so many key experiences in the child's negotiations of independence vis-à-vis its parents that they provide manifold opportunities for parody and social comment."

Read More:

http://www.bugpowder.com/andy/e.hoffmann.html

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2697400013.html

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12969

The world of Hoffmann’s imagination as revealed in this book is a harsh and abrupt one, but it is also vigorous and fascinating. There is an undercurrent of anarchic energy running through this work that is not entirely contained by the moralistic frame.” However, despite being published over 150 years ago, Der Struwwelpeter still continues to spark controversy. In a 1977 article about the dangers of violence in children’s literature, Thomas Freeman argued that Hoffmann’s stories may reinforce fears and negative behaviors in children rather than ameliorate them. Freeman stated, “[b]oth the stories of Conrad and Paulina play upon some of the worst fears which can torment a child. Not only is Paulina burned up, but she is abandoned by her parents, when she needs them desperately. Psychoanalysts would no doubt tell us that the loss of Conrad’s thumbs suggest children’s castration fears.”

Though its content will continue to be debated for years, Der Struwwelpeter’s impact upon children’s literature has been widespread and dramatic. Scholars such as U. C. Knoepflmacher have traced Hoffmann’s influence to several famous twentieth-century writers, theorizing that “[t]he sadism that fuels Hoffmann’s stories of mutilated thumbsuckers and incinerated match girls also operates in the fables of Kipling and Sendak.” Indeed, Maurice Sendak has called Der Struwwelpeter “one of the most beautiful books in the world.”

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Hoffmann’s Slovenly Peter has also offered much ideas for political satire or parody. It has been speculated that one of Hoffmann’s models for his troublemaker was Karl Marx. Under the name Peter Struwwel he published in the revolutionary year of 1848 HANDBÜCHLEIN FÜR WÜHLER (little handbook for disturbers). During World War II appeared Struwwelhitler, a nazi story book by Doktor Schrecklichkeit by Robert and Philip Spence (ca 1942). In the 1960s in Germany Slovenly Peter was a rioting student in Der Struwwelpeter neu frisiert oder lästige Ge-schichten und dolle Bilder für Bürger bis 100 Jahre by Eckart and Rainer Hachfeld (1969). The Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been called as Straw Peter Syndrom, although Slovenly Peter is not actually hyperactive.

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One Response to RESERVOIR OF TEARS: Black Pedagogy & Do Nice Kids Finish Last?

  1. Clare Dudman says:

    Very interesting piece! You may be interested to know that each of the rhymes in Struwwelpeter has a likely back story.

    The idea for Struwwelpeter itself may have come from an advertisement for hair restorer on bill boards at the time; the girl who died in the fire was rumoured to be based on a girl who had died in a fire in Frankfurt due to playing with newly invented and unreliable matches; cruel Frederick’s cruelty to animals was probably initiated by a friend of Hoffmann’s who started off an animal welfare charity in Frankfurt; the role reversal story may be due to Hoffmann’s role in the revolution of 1848 when he became a member of the new government; and the Jonny head in the air may have been initiated by drownings in the river Main.

    Some of them are pretty obvious, I guess! Apart from that he was quite an important psychiatrist in his day and was responsible for the new mental asylum in Frankfurt of which he was superintendent.

    There is a very good biography in German, and excellent museum in Frankfurt (but nothing much in English except for a novel inspired by his life called ’98 Reasons For Being’ (mine!)).

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