Snow White

The Brothers Grimm first published "Snow White" on December 20, 1812, as Tale 53 in their collection Grimms' Fairy Tales. Originally titled Sneewittchen to reflect Low German dialects, the story appeared in English just over a decade later under the name "Snow-Drop." Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm spent decades refining the text, releasing six different versions between 1812 and 1857. The final edition softened some of the earlier graphic violence while sharpening the moral divide between the innocent princess and her jealous stepmother.

In the narrative, a king's daughter with skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony faces a deadly threat from her new mother. When a magic mirror declares Snow White more beautiful than the Queen, the monarch orders a huntsman to kill the girl and bring back her lungs and liver. The huntsman spares the child instead, leading her to a cottage where she finds shelter among seven dwarfs. The Queen eventually tracks her down using disguises to trick Snow White into biting a poisoned apple, sending her into a deathlike sleep that only breaks when a prince dislodges the fruit from her throat.

While the Grimms collected this oral tradition, they did not invent the individual names for the dwarfs found in modern culture. Those specific identities emerged later in a 1912 Broadway play before Walt Disney popularized them in his 1937 animated feature. The original tale ends far more brutally than most adaptations, with the Queen forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she dies at the wedding feast. This version remains classified as Aarne-Thompson type 709, grouping it with other stories about girls fleeing evil stepmothers. [bearbeiten]