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Brothers Grimm didn't write the fairy tales that they published in there book like popular belief but instead collected the 209 stories and put them into a book of fairy tales. Stories that came from this book are Rapunzel, Snow white, and red riding hood. The stories were originally more gory and to us they might seem less like children stories then the American versions are. Disney transformed the stories to fit our American culture of nice pleasant stories with nothing really "bad" happening in them, like death and bloody violence. The three main examples of this is first in Cinderella, when instead of the shoes not fitting and popping off of the step sisters feet like Disney shows, instead the step mother cuts off one of the step sisters toes so the shoe will fit and then the other step sisters heel. Another example is in Red riding hood when instead of the hunter stopping the eating of red riding hood by the wolf he actually cuts her out of the wolfs stomach. Also in the goldilocks American versions she escapes the bears unharmed but in the original she actually gets torn apart and eaten by the bears. The German versions were meant to scare kids more to teach them lessons and it shows in the German culture of kids not being as sheltered as American kids.


One German fairy tale that isn't a popular American fair tale is "Marienkind" which means Mary's Kid in English. In this fairy tale there is a poor family with a young daughter and one day the father was at work when the virgin Mary appeared. She gave the family rules to follow and if they obeyed she would help them. The little girl disobeyed the Virgin and for doing so she wasn't allowed to go to heaven. The lesson is to follow the rules or bad thinks will happen to you. I am not sure of an American fairy tale like this but it is similar to the store of Adam and Eve disobeying the word of God and being punished for such.


The definition of a fairy tale is a story involving fantastic forces, a story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending, and also a made up story usually designed to mislead. This definition sounds more like the American washed down versions of a fairy tale that are more romantic then lesson based. Usually a fairy tale consists of a far away land and has things like talking animals or creatures that aren't in real life. In most fairy tales German or American the story does usually have a good ending but in the German stories the way they get to the end isn't as pleasant as the American versions of the stories.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/aj8/11-fairytales-you-loved-as-a-child-that-are-actual-cfe3
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimmtales.html
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm003.html
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fairy+tale