Possibly rendered by Alexander Platt, the English version became firmly rooted in didactic ideology through its ability to reach a wider audience. Three years after the original German publication, Struwwelpeter was translated into English. Heinrich Hoffmann, “The Dreadful Story about Harriet and the Matches,' The English Struwwelpeter, or Pretty Stories and Funny Pictures for Little Children, translated by Alexander Platt, 1848, The British Library. Struwwelpeter is just the opposite of a model Victorian schoolboy. An unkempt boy with very long hair and nails, he is the first disobedient child to be introduced, and the children’s book is named after him. Unlike Carroll and Milne, who conform to the doctrine of childhood innocence, Hoffmann strictly upholds didacticism as seen through this plate of Struwwelpeter, or Shock-headed Peter. Milne who wrote to entertain their young companions, Hoffmann wrote Der Struwwelpeter in 1844 for his three-year-old son, Carl, after failing to find him a suitable Christmas present. Hoffmann, a German physician, is best known for writing and illustrating ten rhyming stories about the horrific consequences of disobedience in Der Struwwelpeter. Heinrich Hoffmann, “Struwwelpeter,' Der Struwwelpeter, 1845, first edition, Wikipedia.

Parodied by other writers and translated into over thirty-five languages (New York Public Library), Der Struwwelpeter serves as a foundational text for bedtime horrors, political satire and propaganda, and modern comics and film adaptations. His influential children’s book endures, however, beyond the nineteenth century and is a fascinating example of evolution across language and genre throughout literary history Der Struwwelpeter began by strictly conforming to didacticism, but over time, has turned on itself and lost its original didactic intention. Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1809, Hoffmann conforms to the early ideology of sin that treated children as little sinners.

Heinrich Hoffmann’s enduring appeal has established Der Struwwelpeter (1845) as a horrifying didactic text that depicts the cruel consequences of wicked behavior.

Der struwwelpeter book