If you’re North American, the title of this post will most likely bring to mind the story of the children’s fairy tale The Frog Prince. In that tale, there’s a princess who loses her golden ball in a well and is then helped by a talking frog. The frog says he’s really a prince who was turned into a frog by an evil witch. He tells the princess that if she kisses him, he will turn into a prince again. She’s not sure she wants to do that, but in the end, she kisses him, he turns into a handsome prince, they fall in love  at first sight, and live happily ever after.

There’s even an expression in English that comes from the plot of this story, “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your handsome prince.”

Anyway, I’d always thought that the Frog Prince story was by the Brothers Grimm. Well, it is … and yet it isn’t.

The Brothers Grimm published their first collection of fairy tales 200 years ago, in December 1812. In that first book, there were actually two stories, one called Der Froschkonig oder der eiserne Heinrich (“The Frog King; or, Iron Heinrich” and one called Der Froschprinz, (“The Frog Prince”). Here’s a short synopsis of each:

• Synopsis of the original Frog King or, Iron Heinrich story from the 1812 Brothers Grimm book:

A spoiled pretty princess has a golden ball that she accidentally drops in a well in the woods. A talking frog pops up and says he’ll get the ball if she promises to let him come to her castle, eat off her plate, drink from her cup, and sleep in her bed. She promises him this, all the while thinking that she’ll never have to do it because he’s just a frog. When she gets her ball back, she leaves the frog at the well and runs home. On another day, the frog arrives at the castle and insists that she keep her promise. She doesn’t want to, but her father tells her she has to. So, she lets the frog eat from her plate and drink from her cup. She then is supposed to let him sleep in her bed, but she finds him ugly and slimy, so as soon as she’s alone with the frog in her bedroom, she flings him against the wall in disgust. Suddenly, the frog transforms into a prince with nice eyes, who explains he was turned into a frog by an evil witch. He’s got a kingdom for them to go to, so they have to get married.

The prince’s manservant, Heinrich, shows up to escort the bride and groom in a carriage pulled by white horses. It turns out that Heinrich was so upset by his master being turned into a frog, that he put 3 iron bands around his heart to keep it from breaking. As the coach heads toward the castle, the prince (who will be a king when he gets back to his kingdom) calls out to Heinrich that the coach sounds like it’s falling apart, but Heinrich replies that it’s just the sound of the iron bands around his heart breaking apart because he is so happy his master is not a frog anymore.

• Synopsis of the original Frog Prince story from the 1812 Brothers Grimm book:

There was a king with 3 daughters. In his castle courtyard was a well. One day, the oldest daughter goes down to get a glass of water to drink, but it’s all cloudy. As she goes to pour it back into the well, a frog jumps out and tells her if she’ll be his sweetheart, the water will turn clear. She says no, and runs into the house. The middle daughter comes down and the same thing happens to her (cloudy water, frog’s offer),  and she runs back into the house. When the same thing happens to the youngest daughter, she thinks to herself, well, what can it hurt to say that I’ll be the frog’s sweetheart.  After all, he’s only a frog, and I won’t really have to do anything. So, she tells the frog she’ll be his sweetheart, and the frog then makes the water turn clear so she can drink it.  The youngest daughter congratulates herself on her cleverness, thinking she has outsmarted the frog.

Later that night, after she goes to bed, she hears the frog at her door. He says he wants to come in and sleep at the foot of her bed. She figures she has to do it, since she said she’d be his girlfriend, so she lets him in, and he sleeps at the foot of her bed. In the morning, he leaves, only to return that night, when he again sleeps at the foot of her bed. On the third day, the frog wants to sleep on her pillow instead. She says OK, but that this is going to be the last time she’ll let him sleep in her bed. She promptly falls asleep, and awakens in  the morning to find a handsome prince standing by her bed. He explains that he was turned into a frog (but he doesn’t say by whom), and he asks to marry her. They go to her father, who gives his blessing yes. The princess’s sisters are ever afterwards jealous that they blew their chance to marry the handsome prince.

The Brothers Grimm published various editions of their book of fairy tales through the years, but early on, around 1815, they dropped the Froschprinz story from the book, keeping only the Froschkönig story. Which is why the Froschkönig is the story that little kids in Germany learn to this day, and no one here had ever heard of the Grimm story called the Froschprinz.

Now, the first time the story was translated into English in the 1820s, Edgar Taylor, the translator, labelled his translation as being a translation of the Grimm story  Der Froschkönig.  However, he called his English version “The Frog Prince”, not “The Frog King”.

And, he also changed the ending, since he decided that English audiences wouldn’t accept the violent splat of the frog against the wall at the end of the story.  Instead,  Taylor used a simplified version of the ending from the Brothers Grimm’ original Froschprinz story,  where the prince (as a frog) just stays overnight in bed with the princess, and then in the morning he magically turns into a prince. Taylor also dropped the whole subplot with Iron Heinrich, too, which strikes me as a good idea, since in the original story it seems to come out of nowhere right at the end.

I’m currently taking a German conversation class at the university, and in last week’s class we discussed the history of the Froschkönig story, which is why I started looking it to all of this. I was quite suprised to learn how there are so many different versions of Frog King/Prince stories out there, in all different cultures.  In class, we also compared the very first 1812 Brothers Grimm version, which is rather minimalist,  to the last version they published in 1857, which added more details, e.g. the princess is now the fairest in the land, she’s now got 2 sisters, and it was a witch that changed the prince into a frog. Apparently, both Jacob and Wilhelm originally collected the stories, but Wilhelm was the one who edited and embellished them later, toning down some sexual themes that appear in the original versions, e.g., the prince is not just chatting with Rapunzel when he pays her a visit. Wilhelm generally rewrote them aimed at children, since the original book was written for adults.

However, not even the 1857 version of the Froschkönig has a sense of romance: there’s no kiss, no falling in love at first sight, no happily ever after for the two main characters. In fact there is no German version of this story that ever has that in the plot – it’s considered to be an American invention.

OK, so where did that all come from in the American version? Oddly enough, no one seems to know exactly who added the kiss, or when it was first written down that way. Strange.  But that’s definitely the version that I remember reading as a kid, and it’s certainly the most popular version of the tale in North America. I don’t ever recall hearing about changing the frog by launching him against the wall. I guess that’s not surprising. After all, “You have to throw a lot of frogs against the wall before you find your handsome prince” just doesn’t have the same ring.

*****

The recent musical Disney movie The Princess and the Frog , which is actually based on a kids book which in turn is based on the American version of Grimms’ fairy tale, uses a kiss as the mechanism to turn the frog back into a prince. Somehow, given that no German version of the story has that plot, I thought for sure the German name of the movie would be a just a direct translation of the English, e.g. Die Prinzessin und der Frosch.

But no … the German title of the movie is Küss den Frosch,  “Kiss the Frog.” Go figure.

Anyway,  as a reward for making it all the way through this history of the Froschkönig, click here to see a quick montage of clips and a song from that movie.

Not quite a crazy Broadway show tune … but close enough. 😉