
A literary prank that ‘Hansel and Gretel’ was based on a real story - samclemens
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/is-hansel-and-gretel-real
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jamesrcole
This makes me think of the Australian novel (and film based on it) "Picnic at
Hanging Rock", which is entirely fictional yet is widely believed to be based
on true events.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnic_at_Hanging_Rock_(novel)...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnic_at_Hanging_Rock_\(novel\)#Basis_in_reality)

~~~
itronitron
You might be interested then in the horror movie Darkness Falls [1] ... the
DVD has an additional short 'documentary' in which people in a small
Australian town are interviewed about the historical figure that inspired the
film.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness_Falls_(2003_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness_Falls_\(2003_film\))

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svat
Wikipedia article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Hansel_and_Gre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Hansel_and_Gretel)

The book is still available on Amazon: [https://www.amazon.com/Die-Wahrheit-
über-Hänsel-Gretel/dp/34...](https://www.amazon.com/Die-Wahrheit-über-Hänsel-
Gretel/dp/3499150921) (and the movie listed on IMDb:
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093684/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093684/))

Wish I could read German; seems fun!

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wongarsu
Not so much "real" as "based on a real story". It's not like Hansel and Gretel
is about adult baker siblings stealing the recipe for Lebkuchen and burning
the inventor, it's about young siblings held captive by a carnivorous witch
breaking out by burning her alive.

Still an interesting story, the headline is just too click-baity for my taste.

~~~
smitty1e
The headline is an accurate summary of the article.

~~~
wongarsu
At the point I wrote the comment the headline was "A literary prank that led
Germany to believe ‘Hansel and Gretel’ was a real story" which is not an
accurate summary.

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SilasX
Semi-OT: I really don't like HN being used for quirky historical curiosities
(like those found in every atlasobscura.com submission). I want to downvote
these, but can't, and I don't think they rise to the level of deserving being
flagged.

What should I do?

~~~
cryptoz
I think these posts are the #1 encouraged kind of item to submit to HN when
you read the newsguidelines.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

So I think it is your expectation with HN that may need to change, as I would
be shocked to see this content disappear. It's exactly "On-Topic: Anything
that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and
startups.", the first sentence of the guidelines.

~~~
SilasX
That means things that hackers _as hackers_ would find interesting. There’s
significant overlap between hackers and “men who could benefit from dating
advice” but that doesn’t make dating advice topical. The same logic applies to
historical curiosities.

~~~
dang
You're interpreting the guidelines too narrowly. Historical material has
always been welcome here:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20"historical%20materi...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20"historical%20material"&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0).

One way of looking at this is that the contours were originally defined by
what pg's own intellectual curiosity
([https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html)).
He knows more about history than probably anyone I've ever met.

~~~
SilasX
Sure, I guess what bothers me more is how indiscriminate it is, like how Atlas
Obscura just gets fast tracked to the point that it (and related oh-so-clever)
stories make up a disproportional share of the links.

