Comment by tetris11
9 hours ago
The Wikipedia article has actual information instead of the storytelling that the BBC article is insisting on
> Udolph favours the hypothesis that the Hamelin youths wound up in what is now Poland.[40] Genealogist Dick Eastman cited Udolph's research on Hamelin surnames that have shown up in Polish phonebooks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin
Also, every town in Southern Germany looks like that. Hamelin is nothing special in that respect
Quote from the article that you claim doesn't mention it:
> In fact, Udolph found that the family names common in Hamelin at the time show up with surprising frequency in the areas of Uckermark and Prignitz, near Berlin, that he locates as the centre of the migration.
Maybe try reading the whole article before condemning it, instead of just the first couple of paragraphs.
Is Berlin in Poland ?
The Wikipedia article has actual information instead of the storytelling that the BBC article is insisting on
Strange thing to note (and wrong), given they have completely different purposes and the BBC article conveys "actual information" as well just in a less clinical way.
wikipedia does not come out and say "this happened" or "the folktale was (or "must be") based on a historical event". it seems to suggest that the folktale is all the history we have, and everything else is a retcon
"Hameln" is in northern Germany, don't know where the I comes from in the English transliteration.
There are many theories, one of them is the Children's Crusade[0], diseases, pagan sects, but yes, the leading one is the "Ostsiedlung".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostsiedlung
Funnily enough, the district (Landkreis) name in English keeps the original spelling: Hameln-Pyrmont.
> don't know where the i [in Hamelin] comes from in the English transliteration
Could just be that it’s a very inconvenient consonant cluster (and and a speaker of modern English will to some degree turn it into a [lən] or [lɪn], however you spell it).
I’m an English speaker and when I saw it written “Hameln” I thought it was a typo.
It comes from the same place as the i in Munich.
Oh, and my favorite theory:
"Eine andere, weniger stark vertretene Theorie besagt, dass die Hamelner Kinder einem heidnischen Sektenführer aufgesessen sein könnten, der diese zu einem religiösen Ritus in die Wälder bei Coppenbrügge geführt hat, wo sie heidnische Tänze aufführten. Dabei habe es einen Bergrutsch oder Erdfall gegeben, wodurch die meisten umgekommen seien. Noch heute lässt sich dort eine große Kuhle finden, die durch ein solches Ereignis entstanden sein könnte." > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattenf%C3%A4nger_von_Hameln#H...
I'll roughly translate it:
"Another, less thought after theory says, the children of Hameln got seduced by a pagan cult leader. He lead the children to the forest of Coppenbrügge for a religious ritual, where they performed pagan dances. This caused an landslide, causing most of them to die. There is, to this day, still a large pit, that could have been caused by such an event."
Edit: Expanded translation
Well, I'm convinced! What else could have caused a pit, but pagan dancing?
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Hamelin is located in Lower Saxony, not in the southern states.
And there, many cities look like that, too.
It's all about the angle. I am sure that just outside of the camera frame, there's a mobile phone shop, a Burger King or MacDonald's, and other trivially universal city commerce. :-) Let's see...
https://maps.app.goo.gl/hbRSXaDvfKNFmQtT6
No, but there's Rossmann, Kik, Döner, and Woolworth's.
The point I was addressing from the parent comment was the implication that Hamelin is located in southern Germany. It could be rewritten to, as you pointed out:
> Also, every town in Germany looks like that.
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Weird, I was reading the Wikipedia article about that a few days ago and thought of posting that here!
That whatsit phenomenon strikes again!
I wonder if there was or will be a typical modern twisty-take movie about this
Baader-Meinhof.
Hah, macabre and word play. I see you my German brethren.
He is referring to the Baader-Meinhof-Komplex book, that pretty much documents the RAF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
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