Exploring the land of the Brothers Grimm

In the fairy-tale villages that inspired the Brothers Grimm, there isn’t a demented goblin, a wicked witch or a gingerbread house to be seen.

By Jeff Kavanagh In Travel

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16th June, 2012

I’m standing in front of a tangle of stainless steel in Gelnhausen, a small town near Frankfurt in Germany. “What do you see?” asks my guide, Brigitte. It looks like an angel that’s been set on fire, but as we’re standing outside a church, that seems unlikely. I say it anyway, and I’m surprisingly close. The sculpture is of Elisabeth Strupp, a local woman found guilty of witchcraft in the 16th century. As she was a noblewoman, Brigitte explains, she got off lightly, and instead of being burnt at the stake, she was decapitated, then burnt. It’s a brutal story, but given that it ...

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