200 YEARS LATER, Bremen town musicians still hitting the right notes
the neglected are also able to achieve their ends with wit and intelligence,” Lauersays.
It is unusual for a specific city to be named in a fairy tale and raises the question, why the animals wanted to travel to Bremen.
“Something better than death we can find anywhere,” is the way the donkey curtly explains the destination to the rooster.
The version put out by Bremen’s public relations department is as ofter one: “Come with us to Bremen; you won’t very easily find anything better.” Lauer notes that “Bremen was a city with Hanseatic freedoms. It could just as easily have been Amsterdam or Hamburg.” The geographical location that the brothers drew their tales from provide the clue. The tales derive from eastern Westphalia and northern Hesse. The route down the Weser River to the port lay open.
Whatever happened in the story, the animals have finally arrived in the city in real life, at least in the form of a bronze sculpture by Gerhard Marcks (1889-1981) right next to the city hall, where tourists now have to queue up to have their pictures taken along side the animal pyramid.
The donkey’s hooves have been polished smooth — touching them is said to be lucky. Half the souvenirs on offer in the nearby shops in the picturesque Old Town on the banks of the river are devoted to the musicians.
The animals, with the donkey at the bottom and the rooster at the top, adorn mugs, pendants, T-shirts and lollies. They are on offer as wooden toys and as the fairy tale itself in book form.
The Town Musicians Summer kicks off on Sunday with a concert in the St Stephani Church. From March 23 to September 1, the Kunsthalle art museum is putting on the exhibition “Animal Revolt — 200 years of Bremen Town Musicians in Art, Kitsch and Society”.
There will be concerts, street theatre, a festival of street musicians and a new animated film entitled The Fabled Four. The Grimm Society is putting on its own exhibition from May 2 in Kassel, from where it will travel through Germany before going abroad.