INFORMATION - The Association of Jewish Refugees

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Kenneth Ambrose
'' STRUWWELPETER "
It seems strange criticizing a book one had taken
so completely for granted. Sacrilegious, almost. It
certainly would never have occurred to me if someone
hadn't recently given my little boy an English
translation of it (Struwwelpeter, or Merry Stories
and Funny Pictures, pub. Blackie & Son Ltd.,
London and Glasgow). There they were, all the
pictures I remembered from my youth, a memory
sfiared by millions of others who may have had no
more in common with me than the accident of their
childhood lived in Central Europe. No translation,
of course, can ever be quite the same to us who .srrew
up with " Struwwelpeter " in German. " Sieh
eiiimal hier steht er, . . . " can only mean one thing
to us. " Just look at him ! There he stands, ..."
is a perfectly good rendering of this phrase, but I
am sure it will never mean the same to my son.
Some passages just cannot be transcribed easily ;
" Suppenkaspar " for instance becomes " Augustus
who would not have any soup."
However, this is not meant to be a literary
criticism of a perfectly adequate translation. \\'hat
I really wanted to record here was my utter amazement
that as bloodthirsty and generally unpleasant
a book as this should have been " enjoyed " by
the young of so many generations, including myself.
For alter all, there is not one nice story in the whole
book. You don't believe me ? Well, here is a very
short summary :—
There is first of all Struw-welpeter himself, " with
his na^ty hair and hands," as the translation has it.
When my boy first saw him on the cover, he somewhat
apprehensively said, " He won't hurt me with
his nails, will he Mummy ? " Then comes " Cruel
Frederick," a sadist of the first water. All right,
you might say, but he gets his deserts in the story.
True, but only at the cost of showing a dog up as
dangerous and biting him, and by further scaring
the young reader about doctors —•
" The Doctor came and shook his head.
And made a very great to-do.
And gave him nasty physic too."
Again, poor little Pauline has to burst into flame
and burn to a little pile of ashes. One might have
thought there were less shocking ways of teaching
FAMILY EVENTS
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