Grimm Tale Ends Happily in Reunited Germany

Now that the walls are down in Eastern Europe, the long-lost children of Hamelin (or Hameln , as it is usually spelled) might return home. Most Americans first heard about this medieval town in a fairy tale--”The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” just one of the spooky stories from the Brothers Grimm’s “German Legends,” written more than 100 years ago.

The fairy-tale plot line: A stranger in bright-colored clothes comes to town and promises the people that he’ll rid their homes and streets of rats and mice. When the officials give him the go-ahead, he pulls out a flute and starts playing sounds that so charm the rodents, they follow him to the nearby Weser River, where they drown. When the town folk won’t pay for services rendered, out comes the flute again and the early-day James Galway works his magic on the children. They follow him out of town and disappear forever.

Katharina Hucks, one of Hameln’s official guides, says that the Grimms, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Robert Browning all wrote variations of the Pied Piper story. They took their inspiration, she says, from a 16th-Century poem.

“The poem says a strange man in a red hat persuaded the young people of the town to follow him to Coppenbrugge, a town nearby,” Hucks explains. “They had to cross hills and valleys to reach the village, and when they tried to cross the final bridge, it collapsed and they all were killed.”

Realists in Hameln, a small town in northeast Germany, don’t buy that. It’s more likely, Hucks says, that young people of the area emigrated to Eastern Europe when noblemen from surrounding German states sent soldiers to recruit new settlers for open land in what is now eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia.

A plaque on the wall at Hameln’s Rattenfaengerhaus (dubbed the Pied Piper House, now a restaurant) reads: “A.D. 1284--On the 26th of June, the Day of St. John and St. Paul, 130 children--born in Hameln--were led out of town by a piper wearing multicolored clothes. After passing the cavalry near the Koppenberg, they disappeared forever.” Hucks’ explanation: “The Duke of Schaumburg took a lot of young people to West Prussia, Posen, Bohemia and Moravia in 1284. When you look at the old maps, you can see that villages and towns in that area had names similar to villages and towns near this part of the country.

“Records were later destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648),” she says, “so we can only guess how many went with the soldiers. They disappeared forever.”

Maybe not. Perhaps descendants of that long-ago Lost Generation are among the thousands from the former East Germany and Czechoslovakia who, with the opening of borders, have pulled up roots to move to what used to be West Germany.

Hameln, 60 miles from the former East-West frontier, has already taken in nearly 1,000 newcomers, some of whom are living in subsidized housing in a carefully restored section in the oldest part of town. Talk about coincidence: It’s the same area from which the children allegedly disappeared 700 years ago.

Whatever caused the town to lose its youth, it’s the Pied Piper aura that is rejuvenating Hameln’s old town, turning it into a prime stop for visitors touring northwest Germany.

An intensive restoration and renovation effort begun in 1970 has turned the main street, Osterstrasse, into a medieval midway glittering with gilded and furbelowed examples of Weser Renaissance mansions, half-timbered houses, sidewalk cafes and designer boutiques.

The town and its surroundings can easily be seen in a day, as we did, allowing visitors to return to the nearby much-larger city of Hannover well before midnight.

Hameln’s newfound appeal is so great that several years ago, Japanese entrepreneurs wanted to buy and move the gussied-up Gerd Leist House to Happy Kingdom, a Disneyland-type park on the island of Hokkaido in Japan.

When Hamlin officials said the 16th-Century architectural jewel that now serves as the municipal museum wasn’t for sale, the Japanese settled for a reproduction and took a construction crew from Hamlin to work on it.

The Pied Piper’s tune is now echoed by ringing cash registers in unexpected places in town. One tiny bakery on Osterstrasse specializes in rat-shaped marzipan cookies. Dinner at the upscale Rattenschwaenze features “rat tails” (strips of pork loin) over rice. Rat motifs run rampant in toys, appliqued clothing, candy and coin purses.

Every Sunday noon from mid-May to mid-September, the Pied Piper legend is enacted with one of three honorary pipers leading costumed kindergartners and nursery school children through town. Older youngsters play the medieval town folk in the spirited procession.

Best viewing point for the production is at the Market Square near the Hochzeithaus, the 17th-Century festival hall that now houses the archives and town library. A glockenspiel plays the Pied Piper legend daily from the west end of the Hochzeithaus.

Find a seat on one of the market square benches. The 37 bells of the glockenspiel play 13 choruses of a tune about the River Weser. The melodious bedlam goes on and on. Plenty of time for a cup of coffee and a rat-shaped cookie or two. (Show times: 1:05, 3:35 and 5:35 p.m.)

“The best time to see Hameln is early Sunday morning, when most of the town is still asleep,” Hucks says. “It’s an opportunity to really appreciate the town’s variety of architecture.”

There’s a guided tour at 10 a.m., and it was on just such a tour that we saw 13th-Century facades--very plain exteriors topped with star-shaped decoration to protect against witchcraft--and 14th-Century half-timbered houses with devil’s heads at the eaves to keep evil spirits away. But the best show was along the Osterstrasse, where there are Weser Renaissance-period houses with angels, gargoyles and “envy heads”--gilded human faces that were a form of conspicuous ornamentation designed to produce envy in one’s neighbors.

But there’s more to Hameln than the Pied Piper legend. It’s an ideal base for exploring the surrounding territory, where the Weser River flows through thick forests and flat, open plains reminiscent of central Kansas.

Kansas inspired “The Wizard of Oz.” This area, called the Weser Bergland, fed the imagination of the Grimms and Baron von Munchhausen. Von Munchhausen lived in Bodenwerder, a nearby village where an equestrian fountain with a rider and only the front half of a horse stands in the yard of his former home, now the Town Hall. (Japanese entrepreneurs ordered a copy of the statue for their park.)

On summer Sundays, you can take a two-hour boat ride from Hameln to arrive in Bodenwerder in time to hear the “Baron” tell his tall tales from the steps of the Town Hall.

Locals complain that Eastern European factories are polluting the Weser, once famous for the quality of its salmon. And nuclear power towers stand higher than the heavily forested mountains behind them.

Still, the flat terrain, ideal for biking or hiking through the Upper Weser Valley, a sprinkling of small country inns in bucolic wooded areas and campsites along the river banks, make this a popular area for outdoorsy types from Western Europe and Britain.

Packaged tours, available in Hameln, make hiking or biking easy by transporting luggage to the next scheduled stop in a circuit of villages known for their half-timbered houses, hunting lodges and romantic castles in idyllic settings.

The aura of medieval magic is carefully maintained, though autobahns on the west side of the Weser River connect the outlying towns with Hannover, one of Northern Europe’s major railway centers.

GUIDEBOOK

Hameln, Germany

Getting there: Hameln is an hour by car or train from Hannover, a major rail connection. The Pied Piper procession takes place on Sundays from mid-May through mid-September.

Tours: The Hameln Tourist Office offers two package choices: “Three Pied Piper Days” for groups of four or more and “Pied Piper Days Weekends” for groups of two or more. The packages include accommodations, meals, sightseeing and a boat trip on the Weser River. For reservations and information about local excursions, contact the Hameln Tourist Office: Verkehrsverein Hameln, Diesterallee, W-3250 Hameln 1, Germany.

For more information: Contact the German National Tourist Office, 444 S. Flower St., Suite 2230, Los Angeles 90071, (213) 688-7332.