Meet Prof. Hey
Prof. Paul Hey was an extremely productive designer, illustrator, and painter who made hundreds of pictures with motifs from fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. The story about Snow-White and Rose-Red is just one of them. We'll go through the plot with some help of Hey's illustrations, some fully colored and some black and white, which were made at different times and for different purposes.
His Take on Snow-White and Rose-Red
To my knowledge, there is no stand-alone picture book Snow-White and Rose-Red by Paul Hey. The first picture was actually made for postcard seller Ackerman (F. A. Ackermanns Kunstverlag) titled The Guardian Angel (Der bewachende Engel), and fits perfectly to the introductory part of the fairy tale.
Summary
Snow-White and Rose-Red were sisters who lived with their mother in a small house in the wood. They were so nice and kind all the forest animals loved them, and they spent many pleasant hours together. Sometimes they even slept the night outside.
Of course, when the winter started, they moved indoors. One day, a bear knocked at the door. The girls, together with mom, were afraid at first, yet soon realized they don't have to fear this kind and gentle creature who could talk like a human and asked only to warm himself at the fireplace.
Soon, Snow-White and Rose-Red became best friends with the bear.
Yet in the summer, bear told them he had to go. He mentioned some unfinished business with a certain dwarf and Snow-White and Rose-Red continued with their idyllic life like before.
But not for long. They met a dwarf, and saved his life (and repeated that three times) while he was constantly grumbling and swearing at them like the girls were guilty of his misfortunes.
On one occasion, the girls found a dwarf who was just checking his treasure. When he started swearing again, the very same bear who befriended the girls, appeared and killed the dwarf. It panned out the bear was an enchanted prince who immediately regained his true form.
The dwarf used his magical powers to turn him into a bear and steal his precious stuff. But now justice is served and soon a happy ending with a double (!) wedding follows.
For some reason, Prof. Hey didn't portray any of the scenes following the second encounter of the girls with the dwarf. Maybe they were too violent for his taste? Or maybe the publisher dictated what he wanted and what not? We'll probably never know.
That's about that. If you want to know more about the fairy tale Snow-White and Rose-Red, follow this link:
https://hubpages.com/literature/Snow-White-Rose-Red
You are also welcome to explore other posts in this blog.