Hansel and Gretel - a Picture Book with Richard Scholz's illustrations
Hansel and Gretel is a well-known fairy tale about a brother and a sister who are lost in the woods. They found an isolated house made of sweets only to be captured by a man-eating witch who is much stronger than the kids, they eventually manage to trick her into getting in her oven. After that Hansel and Gretel safely return home but not before they search the witch's home and find loads of gold. In this version, we see a whole family (including their mother) happy in the end.
The book is the first in a series of four, all of the same formats, published by van Holkema & Warendorf in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1905. As we will see, they used two-color printing in combination with full-color printing. The illustrator was Richard Scholz (1860-1939), a German painter who studied in Karlsruhe and worked mostly in Dresden and Munich.
After the inside paper, the title page with all the necessary credits follows.
It's pretty amazing what they achieved with only two colors, right?
We are introduced to the family. They are hungry and pessimistic. It looks like they all gonna die from starvation. In such hopeless situations, kids were seen as an unnecessary burden.
They were living in the woods. Full of life, full of dangers.
Children heard the horrifying plan - they would be taken to the woods and left there!
Hansel tried to mark the path, leaving a trail for the kids to be able to find the way home.
The plan didn't work. They are lost. They are alone. And they are very hungry.
Well, it looks like their luck changed. They found a house made of gingerbread and an old lady who invited them inside.
But the old lady was actually a cannibalistic witch who wanted to eat them both. First, she'll try to fatten Hansel and Gretel a bit.
Hansel is locked in a cage and Gretel must help the witch.
Gretel outsmarted the witch and pushed her into the oven. She rescued herself and her brother!
It looks like we have a happy ending after all.
Kids brought home a treasure from the witch's hut, parents were happy seeing them and they lived happily ever after.
Here are listed all the titles from the series: Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, all illustrated by the best German artists from the beginning of the 20th century. Precious gifts for kids in those times and very desirable items among collectors of vintage children's literature.
Do you know Hansel and Gretel is one of the very rare classic fairy tales with more than one main character? Even more - we have interesting dynamics between the siblings. At first, Hansel is full of ideas, and solutions. He is active, protective, and brave. When he is imprisoned, for some time it looks like everything is lost for the kids. But Gretel surprises everybody with her suggestion to the witch. She pushes the wicked witch into the oven and saves the brother. If we remember the version from Grimms' collection, she had an idea to delay her brother's death with a chicken bone, serving as an indicator of a slow fattening process and she is the one who finds the way for the safe return of both children across the river.
More about this special fairy tale can be found in the next article:
Story of Hansel and Gretel
For us, there is only the back cover to check:
That's it. Hansel and Gretel or Hans en Grietje by Richard Scholz.