Hansel and Gretel

Although Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm credited "various tales from Hesse" (the region where they lived) as their source, scholars have argued that the brothers heard the story in 1809 from the family of Wilhelm's friend and future wife, Dortchen Wild, and partly from other sources.[7][1][9][3] A handwritten note in the Grimms' personal copy of the first edition reveals that in 1813 Wild contributed to the children's verse answer to the witch, "The wind, the wind,/ The heavenly child," which rhymes in German: "Der Wind, der Wind,/ Das himmlische Kind."[2]

According to folklorist Jack Zipes, the tale emerged in the Late Middle Ages (1250–1500). Later, close written variants like Martin Montanus' Gartengesellschaft (1590) began to appear.[3] Christine Goldberg argues that the episode of the paths marked with stones and crumbs, already found in the French "Finette Cendron" and "Hop-o'-My-Thumb" (1697), represents "an elaboration of the motif of the thread that Ariadne gives Theseus to use to get out of the Minoan labyrinth".[10] A house made of confectionery is also found in a 14th-century manuscript about the Land of Cockayne.[7]

Sculpture of Hansel on the duck by Ignatius Taschner. Märchenbrunnen, Berlin.

From the pre-publication manuscript of 1810 (Das Brüderchenund das Schwesterchen) to the sixth edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1850, the Brothers Grimm have made several alterations to the story, which progressively gained in length, psychological motivation, and visual imagery,[11] but also became more Christian in tone, shifting the blame for abandonment from a mother to a stepmother associated with the witch.[1][3]

In the original edition of the tale, the woodcutter's wife is the children's biological mother,[12] but she was also called "stepmother" from the 4th edition (1840).[13][5] The Brothers Grimm indeed introduced the word "stepmother", but retained "mother" in some passages. Even their final version in the 7th edition (1857) remains unclear about her role, for it refers to the woodcutter's wife twice as "the mother" and once as "the stepmother".[2]

The sequence where the duck helps them across the river is also a later addition. Another revision was that some versions claimed the mother died from unknown causes, left the family, or remained with the husband at the end of the story.[14] In the 1810 pre-publication manuscript, the children were called "Little Brother" and "Little Sister", and eventually named Hänsel and Gretel in the first edition (1812).[11] Wilhelm Grimm also adulterated the text with Alsatian dialects, "re-appropriated" from August Ströber's Alsatian version (1842), in order to give the tale a more "folksy" tone.[5][lower-alpha 2]

Goldberg notes that although "there is no doubt that the Grimms' Hänsel und Gretel was pieced together, it was, however, pieced together from traditional elements," and its previous narrators themselves had been "piecing this little tale together with other traditional motifs for centuries."[6] For instance, the duck helping the children cross the river may be the remnant of an old traditional motif in the folktale complex that was reintroduced by the Grimms in later editions.[6]

"Hansel and Gretel" is the prototype for the fairy tales of the type Aarne–Thompson–Uther (ATU) 327A. In particular, Gretel's pretense of not understanding how to test the oven ("Show Me How") is characteristic of 327A, although it also appears traditionally in other sub-types of ATU 327.[15] As argued by Stith Thompson, the simplicity of the tale may explain its spread into several traditions all over the world.[16]

A closely similar version is "Finette Cendron", published by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy in 1697, which depicts an impoverished king and queen deliberately losing their three daughters three times in the wilderness. The cleverest of the girls, Finette, initially manages to bring them home with a trail of thread, then a trail of ashes, but her peas are eaten by pigeons during the third journey. The little girls then go to the mansion of a hag, who lives with her husband the ogre. Finette heats the oven and asks the ogre to test it with his tongue, so that he falls in and is incinerated. Thereafter, Finette cuts off the hag's head. The sisters remain in the ogre's house, and the rest of the tale relates the story of "Cinderella".[7][10]

In the Russian Vasilisa the Beautiful, the stepmother likewise sends her hated stepdaughter into the forest to borrow a light from her sister, who turns out to be Baba Yaga, a cannibalistic witch. Besides highlighting the endangerment of children (as well as their own cleverness), the tales have in common a preoccupation with eating and with hurting children: The mother or stepmother wants to avoid hunger, and the witch lures children to eat her house of candy so that she can then eat them.[17]

Other folk tales of ATU 327A type include is the French "The Lost Children", published by Antoinette Bon in 1887,[18][19] or the Moravian "Old Grule", edited by Maria Kosch in 1899.[19]

Structural comparisons can also be made with other tales of ATU 327 type ("The Children and the Ogre"), which is not a simple fairy tale type but rather a "folktale complex with interconnected subdivisions" depicting a child (or children) falling under the power of an ogre, then escaping by their clever tricks.[20]

In ATU 327B ("The Brothers and the Ogre"), a group of siblings come to an ogre's house who intends to kill them in their beds, but the youngest of the children exchange the visitors with the ogre's offspring, and the villain kills his own children by mistake. They are chased by the ogre, but the siblings eventually manage to come back home safely.[21] Stith Thompson points the great similarity of the tales types ATU 327A and ATU 327B that "it is quite impossible to disentangle the two tales".[22]

ATU 327C ("The Devil [Witch] Carries the Hero Home in a Sack") depicts a witch or an ogre catching a boy in a sack. As the villain's daughter is preparing to kill him, the boy asks her to show him how he should arrange himself; when she does so, he kills her. Later on, he kills the witch and goes back home with her treasure. In ATU 327D ("The Kiddlekaddlekar"), children are discovered by an ogre in his house. He intends to hang them, but the girl pretends not to understand how to do it, so the ogre hangs himself to show her. He promises his kiddlekaddlekar (a magic cart) and treasure in exchange of his liberation; they do so, but the ogre chases them. The children eventually manage to kill him and escape safely. In ATU 327F ("The Witch and the Fisher Boy"), a witch lures a boy and catch him. When the witch's daughter tries to bake the child, he pushes her in the oven. The witch then returns home and eats her own daughter. She eventually tries to fell the tree in which the boy is hiding, but birds fly away with him.[21]

The initial episode, which depicts children deliberately lost in the forest by their unloving parents, can be compared with many previous stories: Montanus's "The Little Earth-Cow" (1557), Basile's "Ninnillo and Nennella" (1635), Madame d'Aulnoy's "Finette Cendron" (1697), or Perrault's "Hop-o'-My-Thumb" (1697). The motif of the trail that fails to lead the protagonists back home is also common to "Ninnillo and Nennella", "Finette Cendron" and "Hop-o'-My-Thumb",[23] and the Brothers Grimm identified the latter as a parallel story.[24]

Finally, ATU 327 tales share a similar structure with ATU 313 ("Sweetheart Roland", "The Foundling", "Okerlo") in that one or more protagonists (specifically children in ATU 327) come into the domain of a malevolent supernatural figure and escape from it.[21] Folklorist Joseph Jacobs, commenting on his reconstructed proto-form of the tale (Johnnie and Grizzle), noticed the "contamination" of the tale with the story of The Master Maid, later classified as ATU 313.[25] ATU 327A tales are also often combined with stories of ATU 450 ("Little Brother and Sister"), in which children run away from an abusive stepmother.[3]

The fairy tale enjoyed a multitude of adaptations for the stage, among them the opera Hänsel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck—one of the most performed operas.[30] It is principally based upon the Grimm's version, although it omits the deliberate abandonment of the children.[7][8]

A contemporary reimagining of the story, Mátti Kovler's musical fairytale Ami & Tami, was produced in Israel and the United States and subsequently released as a symphonic album.[31][32]

Several writers have drawn inspiration from the tale, such as Robert Coover in "The Gingerbread House" (Pricks and Descants, 1970), Anne Sexton in Transformations (1971), Garrison Keillor in "My Grandmother, My Self in Happy to Be Here" (1982), and Emma Donoghue in "A Tale of the Cottage" (Kissing the Witch, 1997).[8]

Elements from the story were used in the 1994 horror film Wes Craven's New Nightmare for its climax.

The most recent adaption of the fairy tale is Gretel & Hansel, a 2020 American horror film directed by Oz Perkins.

Hansel and Gretel's trail of breadcrumbs inspired the name of the navigation element "breadcrumbs" that allows users to keep track of their locations within programs or documents.[33]