Review of Recoding the Ethics of War in Grimms’ Fairy Tales
Simpson, Pierce Anne. 2011. In Enlightened War German Theories and Cultures of Warfare from Frederick the Great to Clausewitz, edited by E Krimmer and P A Simpson, 151–72. Boydell & Brewer.
The article centres three different fairy tales by Grimm that deal with the post conflict reintegration of soldiers into society as well as their poverty and abuses within the military hierarchy. In both “The Devil and His Grandmother” and “The Devil’s Sooty Brother”, underpaid and desperate soldiers make pacts with the devil, but emerge healthy and wealthy. The critique is towards wealthy kings not paying them enough and sergeants treating soldiers terribly. The devil here has a higher moral ranking than the king/ army officers. In “Bearskin”, the soldier is rejected by his family and his military skills (shooting) prove useless after conflict. In a pact with the devil, he loses his human appearance and only after seven years, he is allowed to shave. This is him rehumanising and then coming home to his new wife, to domesticity.
These critical fairy tales are set in a time where nationalism and war fever were highly valued in European societies. Yet, even though conflict is implicitly part of the stories, the treatment of powerful people and of society doesn’t value soldiers but puts them in penury. The stories serve as an important reminder that work towards peace building is not done at the end of conflict and that people involved in the war effort can’t just immediately assume their “normal” positions in a post conflict society. Both difficulties in post-conflict recovery and inequalities and abuses of soldiers in the military are uncovered. The perversion of the devil being the soldier’s helper and society harming them distorts ideas of good and evil and of who disturbs or helps with building peace.