The Storyteller (15 page)

So has from the little German village canton up to that of the Javanese primal forest every form on earth buried its physiognomic seal in the writings of German geographers, travellers and poets in one century. Therefore the title of this book is more than a happy formulation: a discovery, and each reader will find fulfilled in it the hope of its editor, which is ‘to introduce' a portion of ‘lost German intellectual greats'.

—

Translated by Esther Leslie and Sebastian Truskolaski
.

First published in the
Frankfurter Zeitung
, 3 February 1928;
Gesammelte Schriften III
, 88–94.

Jumping Jack (Hampelmann)
, 1919.

Bust of a Child (Kopf eines Kindes)
, 1939.

T
he cultural effect that children's lives and activities exert on the ethnic and linguistic communities in which they take place has been, to this day, a largely unexplored chapter of cultural history, and yet it is one of the most relevant. As contribution to this, the highest value should be accorded to a comprehensive collection of verses and sayings of children from Frankfurt, of which I am about to convey something. Its creator is the locally based Rector Wehrhan, though incidentally he is
not a child of Frankfurt but, rather, a native of Lippe. In 1908, he laid the foundations for a large archive, which has grown over the course of time to include well over a thousand pieces and fragments, thanks not only to his tireless efforts, but also to a well-organised support system. Everything – all manner of verses, turns of phrase, jokes and puzzles – that accompanies the lives of Frankfurt schoolchildren, from their earliest babyhood to the threshold of puberty, can be found here, no matter whether these are the child's own idioms or whether they have their origin in stereotypical phrases from their parents' tongue.

What is found in Wehrhan's collection, however, is partly an ancient good; in only a few cases was it created by children. And the judicious user of these documents will not focus on ‘originals'. Rather, here he can trace how the child ‘models', how he or she ‘tinkers', how – in the intellectual realm as well as in the sensuous one – he or she never adopts the established form as such, and how the whole richness of his or her mental world occupies the narrow track of variation. The children return the oldest fragments and phrases of verse to the adults in variegated forms; their work lies not so much in the gist of these pieces, as in the unpredictably appealing play of transformation. The material encompasses around a hundred folders, organised according to keywords. There are ‘the first jokes', ‘baking cakes', ‘rhymes told on the lap', ‘going to bed and getting up', ‘the dumb and clumsy child', ‘the weather', ‘animal names', ‘plants', ‘weekdays', ‘Zeppelin', ‘world war', ‘nicknames', ‘Jewish rhymes', ‘banter and teasing', ‘tongue twisters', ‘popular songs', to name but a few. This is to say nothing of the great collection of playground rhymes and the impressive codex of hopscotch games, including the copious schemes that have been drawn in chalk onto the pavements of Frankfurt, where, over the years, playing children have hopped on one leg.

Some rhymes from the World War with their scathing satirical power:

Some counting rhymes:

*      *      *

Some constructivist feats:

An old cloister joke from children's lips:

Hopefully all those who are interested in researching children's creativity need not wait too long for a complete publication of the Wehrhan collection.

—

Translated by Esther Leslie
.

First published
Frankfurter Zeitung
, 16 August 1925;
Gesammelte Schriften IV
, 792–6.

Portrait Sketch of a Costumed Lady (Bildnisskizze einer kostümierten Dame)
, 1924.

F
ormed by an eleven-year-old girl from words given to her.

Freedom – garden – faded – greeting – crazy – eye of a needle

Since freedom cannot be attained as quickly as the leaves in the garden have faded, its greeting is all the stormier, and even the crazy people, who believe the eye of a needle to be larger than a monkey, take part.

Table cloth – sky – pillow – continent – eternity

The table in front of him was covered by a table cloth and it stood under the open sky. He lay on the pillow on the continent remote from the world, as if he did not want to wake up for eternity.

Lips – bendy – dice – rope – lemon

Her lips were so rosy, like bendy roses, when one infected them while playing with dice or during a tug of war with a rope, but her gaze was bitter like the peel of a lemon.

Corner – emphasis – character – drawer – flat

On the corner – he said it with emphasis – I saw a character that was flat like a drawer.

Pipe – border – booty – busy – skinny

The pipe at the border was a place for robbers. This is where they brought their booty, since the path was not busy. In the moonlight, the figures appeared skinny.

Pretzel – feather
¹
– pause – lament – doohickey

Time curves like a pretzel through nature. The feather paints the landscape and, if there is a pause, then it is filled with rain. One hears a lament because there is no doohickey.

—

Translated by Esther Leslie
.

First published in
Die Literarische Welt
, 3 December 1926;
Gesammelte Schriften IV
, 802–3.

Flower Family V (Blumenfamilie V)
, 1922.

Verses by Walter Benjamin Drawings by Rudolf Grossmann

—

Translated by Esther Leslie
.

First published in
Die literarische Welt
, 24 December 1926;
Gesammelte Schriften VI
, 545–7.