The Heinzelmännchen are a helpful household spirits or kobolds associated with the city of Cologne in Germany, akin to brownies of Scotland. It has become traditional to tell their story during Christmas-tide. The creatures are also loosely referred to as "elves", rather in the sense of "The Elves and the Shoemaker". The little house gnomes are said to have done all the work of the citizens of Cologne during the night, so that the inhabitants of Cologne could be very lazy during the day. According to the legend, this went on until a tailor's wife got so curious to see the gnomes that she scattered peas onto the floor of the workshop to make the gnomes slip and fall. The gnomes, being infuriated, disappeared and never returned. From that time on, the citizens of Cologne had to do all their work by themselves.

Nomenclature

Hänneschen once used to be a commonplace character in Cologne's puppet theater. The genuine Kölsch (Colognian) dialect form should be Heizemann/Heizemännche (pl. Heizemänncher), while Heinzelmänchenn is the normalized High German form. A two-pronged theory on the origin of the name was proposed by (1976), first from the form "Heinzelmännlein" as a colloquial name for mandrake dolls, which evolved into lore about them acting as animated house spirits. Secondly, other than being a personal name, "Heize" or "Heizenkunst" was the name for a water-draining contraption in the Erzgebirge mining region of Saxony. By extrapolation, its operators could have also been called Heinz, according to Rumpf.

Weyden (1826)

This legend of the Heinzelmänchenn was first written down by the Cologne teacher Ernst Weyden (1805–1869) in 1826. It was translated into English by Thomas Keightley and published 1828 in his book The Fairy Mythology. Weyden's account opens thus: While the lore of the Heinzelmänchenn in the city of Cologne was very much alive until c. 1780 according to Weyden, everything about the sprite before that time remains completely in the dark. Weyden seems to have begun his "restoration" effort around 1821.

Kopisch's ballad (1836)

In 1836 the painter and poet August Kopisch published a poem beginning with the words: (also reprinted in his 1848 anthology ), which became immensely popular and garnered the poet his fame. The opening lines run thus: It has been asserted that the "literary" lore of Heinzelmänchenn only became widely known through Kopisch's poem.

Criticism

Folklorist (1976) argued that the oral origins material Ernst Weyden (1826) compiled was essentially the sole source Kopisch used to craft his ballad. Some of the underlying assumption, such as Weyden must have owned a considerable library of folkloric writings while Kopisch had none such, has been challenged by. Hilgers considers Weyden's effort to be a "restoration" of the Heinzelmännchen-story begun in 1821. In the HdA or, contributor Lily Weiser-Aall classed the Heinzelmännchen as a "literary name" type of "kobold", crediting Kopisch for its fame.

Popular culture

] Figures of Heinzelmännchen are is featured in various situations at Cologne's annual Christmas season markets held at the Heumarkt and the Alter Markt square (the "Heinzels Wintermärchen").

Monuments

In Cologne, a fountain (Heinzelmännchenbrunnen) was installed on Straße Am Hof, near the Cologne Cathedral and the city's oldest brewery, the Früh. The fountain commemorates the Heinzelmännchen and the inquisitive tailor's wife, and was constructed 1897–1900 by the sculptor and his father. The tailor's wife sculpture was later replaced with a replica, while the original is held in display at (armoury).

Musical adaptations

The words were set to music by the German Lieder composer Carl Loewe, who published his "Die Heinzelmännchen" (the brownies), opus 83, in 1841. A carnival song about dedicated helpers "Heizemänncher" was authored by for the year 1844.

Eilenburg legend

The legend about the "little folk" localized in Eilenburg, Saxony (Des kleinen Volkes Hochzeitsfest, Grimms Deutsche Sagen No. 31) has inspired that city to promote their own Heinzelmännchen, including a mascot parodically named "Heinz Elmann".