The ''Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales'' (''Enzyklopädie des Märchens'') is a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

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on international

folkloristics Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics, tradition studies or folk life studies in the UK) is the academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the ac ...

, which runs to fifteen volumes and is acknowledged as the most comprehensive work in its field. It examines over two centuries of research into the folk narrative tradition. It was begun by Kurt Ranke in the 1960s and was continued by chief editor

Rolf Wilhelm Brednich Rolf Wilhelm Brednich (8 February 1935 – 30 November 2023) was a German Europeanist ethnologist and ethnographer (''Volkskundler'') and folklorist. Biography Rolf Wilhelm Brednich was born on 8 February 1935. He studied ''Volkskunde'', Germ ...

, both of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences (Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen). Like the technical periodical '' Fabula'' it is published by the

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with working premises at the Georg-August University of

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and as a project of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. The forerunner of this work was the ''Handwörterbuch des deutschen Märchens'' (''Handbook of German Fairy Tales''), of which only two volumes were published. (article on the making of the ''Enzyklopädie des Märchens'') The first article ''Aarne, Antti Amatus'' appeared in slip in 1975, and the first volume in 1977. By 2014, the final fourteenth volume had been published, followed by an additional volume with lists, indexes and corrigenda in 2015. In all there are approximately 3900 articles, alphabetically arranged, from over 800 authors from over 60 countries. The ''Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales'' provides an overview in the following areas, as relevant to folk narrative research: * Theories and methodologies, * Genre questions, problems of style and structure, issues of context and performance * Important tale-types and motifs * Biographies of scholars, collectors, and authors * National and regional surveys

Creation and compilation

The project was begun by Kurt Ranke in the early 1960s with a small staff, and the first fascicle appeared in 1975. Ranke was not only the founder but first chief editor of the project; he was succeeded by

, who completed the project. Other editors included Elfriede Moser-Rath (1963-1987),

Max Lüthi Max Lüthi (1909 in Bern – 1991 in Zürich) was a Swiss literary theorist. He is considered the founder of formalist research on folk tales. His first book is the field's foundational text, "a classic, a definitive statement about the natu ...

(1973-1984), Rudolf Schenda (1973-1992), Lutz Rohrich (1973-2006), and Regina Bendix (2005-2006). Technical editors included Doris Boden, Ulrich Marzolph, Ulrike-Christine Sander, and Christine Shojaei Kawan. An online-database based on the Encyclopaedia, the ''Encyclopaedia of the Folk Tale Online'', was published in 2016.

Notes

External links

Homepage of the project ''Enzyklopädie des Märchens''
in English
Subject headings for ''Enzyklopädie des Märchens ''
in German {{- Fairy Tales, Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales, Encyclopedia of Works about fairy tales Fairy Tales, Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales, Encyclopedia of 20th-century encyclopedias 21st-century encyclopedias