Hamelin, Germany The pretty little town of Hameln on the Weser river in northern Germany was the location of the famous once-upon-a-time fairy tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The town was ignored by the transformations of the industrial revolution and so nowadays is a perfectly preserved play town for tourism. A trail of painted rats on the pavement leads the visitor through the narrow lanes from one tourist attraction to another. For the rat tourist, it is like a route of pilgrimage.
Except that there isn't much for the pilgrim to see. The fairy tale of the Pied Piper as we know it, as collected by the Brothers Grimm and refabricated by Robert Browning, are only two of numerous known variations of a fable which has been added to considerably in hundreds of years of oral history. One of the earliest written sources of the legend is an inscription on the town hall written 150 years after the event: In the year 1284 after the birth of Christ A later building on the site has become known as the Rattenfängerhaus or Rat Catcher's House (although in none of the tellings of the legend was the Pied Piper ever a resident of Hamelin).
It is apparent that something tragic happened in 1284 that altered life in Hameln for hundreds of years, but the specific details of where or why the piper led the children are lost forever to history, as is any evidence that the original event involved rats at all! Apparently, the rats didn't show up in the tale until some 200-300 years later. The rat tourist seeking a connection to the ancient past is disappointed. Confounded by the lack of specifics in fairy tale reality, he wanders the well-scrubbed, clean streets. The placid Weser looks hardly strong enough to drown a mouse, let alone legions of city rats. A troupe of day-trippers marches by in search of overpriced postcards and souvenir tea towels. The damp cobblestones of the narrow empty streets are hardly warmed by a weak sun. But looking up there is a sudden inspiration. Even though Hameln has sold itself entirely to a shallow sort of kitsch tourism, there is something ridiculously funny about all this. Perhaps after all these years the rats might come out the winners. In this town you can sell anything if it has a rat on it.
Every weekend the town council stages a pageant retelling the tale in the public square, with crawling children playing the role of the rats. Above the stage we watch for the clock and glockenspiel to ring the hour. A door opens and there he comes, that rascally piper leading the rats to their doom! Turn back poor rats!
In the town museum there is an interesting exhibit about medieval rat catchers. These itinerant exterminators walked the streets as other medieval tradesmen did, with a sign on their shoulder advertising their services to those who might need them. In the case of the rat catcher, this was a cage of rats held high. You knew he was good at his job if he had a good number of dead rats hanging from the cage, but you knew he was even better if he had managed to capture a few live ones inside.
Before leaving Hameln, better step into a bakery for some coffee and some rat-shaped pastries and other such kitsch. They've got chocolate icing for eyes and tails and peanuts for ears. Mmmm!
Hameln |
