Thank you for your interest in German storytelling activities. The following pages were launched on the web in November 1999 as a platform of information and exchange between the tellers and their audience. For visitors from abroad a few words of introduction might help, although they just reflect the author's (=webmaster's) personal opinion.

Compared with other countries, Germany seems to be rather underdeveloped as far as storytelling is concerned. The oral tradition - as a completely natural medium of communication between adults - nearly vanished in the first half of the 20th century; although fortunately telling stories would sometimes survive within the families, with parents telling (or reading) stories to their children.

Then, in the 1950's, the Europäische Märchengesellschaft was founded in West Germany. Although its main interest was the academic study of Märchen (wonder-tale is not the exact translation, but comes close), from the beginning, tellers also joined the association. They did not call themselves storytellers, but Märchenerzähler (= fairy-tale tellers). Their repertoire largely consisted of Grimms' tales, and since then have been insisting on telling them literally as the Grimms wrote them down, which, from a tecnical point of view, rather should be called "reciting". (As is well known, Germans always liked referring to so-called higher authorities.) Public interest was far from great through the next couple of decades, so things became rather stagnant.

In the seventies, social and cultural paradigms changed all over the Western countries, including West Germany. Folktales and fairytales as a bearer of traditional values saw themselves exposed to a severe criticism, progressive impulses to performing arts came from the freie Theater, alternative theatres. Only few artists dared (or felt inclined) to carry on this monumentum towards storytelling, and those who did rarely took up traditional subjects; prefering to develop their own (progressive) stories or improvised together with their audience.

A third party joined during the ninties of last century, coming from the New Age and esoteric movement. Again, these tellers restricted themselves to traditional fairy-tales and thus felt closer to their conservative colleagues, although mostly rejected by the conservatives for what was seen as too much irrationalism.

During the last decade, nearly ten years after this site was brought to life, things have changed. Many storytellers from all the factions mentioned above have professionalized considerably and the efforts to establish a network - undertaken, among others, by this site - have not been fruitless. In January 2008, the first general meeting of German speaking storytellers not only from Germany but also from Austria and Switzerland took place in Aachen, the next meeting is scheduled for June 2009 in the lovely Black Forest. We talk and tell...

The site www.erzaehlen.de is a privately organised attempt to offer a survey of the manifold storytelling activities and to improve communication between the tellers, asking the audience to join the discussion. As for the site-menu, you'll find the english keywords above. Adresses, links and dates speak for themselves; if you desperately need a translation of this site, the babelfish (© altavista.com) provides its serivces: please follow this link and select "Englisch" in the babelfish area at the right bottom. You will get a machine generated translation of the page "Texte", all following pages clicked to within the babelfish window will be translated automatically.

So long!