ABSTRACT
The concept of storytelling is usually combined with the idea of legends, fairy tales, stories of heroes and saints, and comic tales—that is, with a small number of so-called classic categories of prose created by the people. It is commonly accepted that such stories have all along stood at the center of orally transmitted stories of the “people” (the “folk”). This is certainly based on an oversimplified viewpoint. This is so because life among the lower levels of society has at all times been determined primarily by work and the concerns about daily needs. As a result, conversation and telling are likely to have dealt with everyday topics. But until the recent past, hardly anything of these “everyday tellings” was written down. On the other hand, numerous subjects for legends, comic tales, and fairy tales have been transmitted from older literature, which is based in part on oral sources and which, through research, can be ascribed to folk tellings of specific social levels. For nineteenth-century Germany this would apply to large portions of the rural population who were mostly without opportunity for education and had practically no means of communication other than verbal exchange.
