The Juniper Tree

"The Juniper Tree" (also The Almond Tree; ) is a German fairy tale published in Low German by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1812 (KHM 47). The story contains themes of child abuse, murder, cannibalism and biblical symbolism and is one of the Brothers Grimm's darker and more mature fairy tales. The tale is of Aarne–Thompson type 720 ("The Juniper Tree"). Another such tale is the English The Rose-Tree, although it reverses the sexes from The Juniper Tree; The Juniper Tree follows the more common pattern of having the dead child be a boy. Origin The tale was published by the Brothers Grimm in the first edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812. A somewhat different version appeared a few months earlier Johann Gustav Büsching's Volks-Sagen, Märchen und Legenden (1812). It was believed until the early 1870s that the Brothers Grimm re-adapted various oral recountings and fables heard from local peasants and townspeople in order to write their well-known fairy tales. However, various critics including Vanessa Joosen argue that this assumption is false, based on an overwhelming amount of disputing evidence. Literary critic Walter Scherf argued that the Grimm brothers were inspired by the painter Philipp Otto Runge's original adaptation of The Juniper Tree, originally written as The Almond Tree. The Grimm brothers themselves wrote in the appendix to the 1812 first edition of the KHM that the text was supplied by Philipp Otto Runge.