The Facts Behind the Fairy Tale: #1 - Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs

I guess most of us are familiar with the famous fairy tale "Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs". In its current form, this fairy tale was created and written down by Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, often called "Grimm brothers" today. And no, it wasn't Disney.
However, the Grimm brothers were not fiction writers. They were scientist of germanism, studying and collecting the german language, its origins and its then (the early 1800s) contemporary form. This work also resulted in their publication "Die Deutsche Grammatik" in 4 volumes, the first organized dictionary of the german language, first published between 1826 -1837.
Another approach of studying the german language they made, was to collect old tales, myths and legends which had been circulating among the population, some of them centuries old, as well as old scripts and documents.
This material led to their most popular and famous publication "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" (Children's and Home Fairy Tales) in 2 volumes, 1812 and 1815.

I think I'm sensing some impatient looks here, so let's dig into the promised true fact behind "Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs" now.
The story has 2 main elements: Snow White, a very pretty young woman of noble origin, who gets assassinated by her evil step mother.
And - you may have guessed - the dwarfs, who live a life as miners far from any other people.
The incredible thing is: both are real! They had no connection, and were seperated by centuries, but both actually existed at one point.

"Snow White"

The story of the real Snow White is actually a mysterious case, which happened roughly 250 years before the time of the Grimm's. Facing a forced marriage, a young noble woman, Margaretha von Waldeck, fled into hiding, presumably to a monastry. But later she died at the age of 21 from unknown reasons anyway (no happy end there). Such things were not uncommon among nobility, when it came to throne succession, heritage and so on.

"The dwarf miners"

Now it gets really weird. The dwarf miners are a historical fact that goes back all the way to the late medival time, the 14th and 15th century. So, 400-500 years before the Grimm brothers lived.
The root of this amazing story is in the city state of Venice. During the late medival, Venice was the hub of trading, wealth and culture in Europe. No other state was richer, more influent or better connected than the Venecians. The brightest minds and the best artists worked in Venice, and their technology - like the still famous Murano glass - was unmatched.
But Venice had one big problem: it had basically no territory. No land with natural rescources. Everything the Venicians needed had to be aquired through trade with other states or traders.
As a solution for this dilemma, the Venicians came up with a idea, that - even if not very inventive - worked before and still does to this day: stealing.
Of course it was out of the question to just march into some neighbour countries and steal from it - that would have meant open war.
To avoid this, Venice invented a stealthy method to achieve the same result. They recruited people with growth deficiency, commonly called dwarfs or midgets. Such people had a hard life in the medival society, that was ruled by superstition and religious fanatism, so it was propably not difficult to make them sign up for a well payed, but also dangerous job.

They received training in finding and mining various ores, like gold, silver, copper, manganese, chrome and other, and then were send north into the Alp mountain region and beyond into the german mountain regions, which were known to hold different kinds of ore rescources.
Naturally, they had to avoid any contact with the local population, or even worse the authorities. But in those days, the population was very sparse, especially in the mountainous regions.
However, as this went on for decades, the "dwarf miners" did get spotted by locals here and there. The outcome of such contact could vary a lot. Often it layed the foundation for absurd stories and rumours, at times the miners and the local population had a friendly relation, but there is also indication of rare cases that the miners murdered a local to avoid being exposed.
Over the centuries, all those rumours and folkore shaped the tales of the dwarf miners, even long after they had left and Venice had lost its importance.
But in the southern part of Germany, evidence of their activities can still be found: old mining shafts, that are too small for normal people, place names that still mention dwarf miners, and so on.
And the old tales, of course, that the Grimm brothers also discovered.

All this shows once more: no fairy tale is as wonderous as reality can be.

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image: BR/Andreas Wünschirs

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