Origin of the Snow White tale

Folklorist Joseph Jacobs, in Europa's Fairy Book, in his commentaries, pointed out that the story of Snow White seemed to combine motifs from several tales.[4] Scholar Sigrid Schmidt reached a similar conclusion regarding the story, after comparing European and African variants.[5]

Folklorist Christine Goldberg also noted that the tale of Snow White (and by extension, tale type ATU 709) shows a combination of motifs present in other folktales: the children in the woods (ATU 327, "Children and the Ogre" or "Hansel and Gretel"); a heroine cursed into a deep sleep (ATU 410, "Sleeping Beauty"); treacherous sisters (ATU 510, "Cinderella", and ATU 511, "One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes"); a house in the woods (ATU 451, "The Seven Ravens").[6]

Scholar Graham Anderson compares the story of Snow White to the Roman legend of Chione, recorded in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The name Chione means "Snow" in Greek and, in the story, she is described as the most beautiful woman in the land, so beautiful that the gods Apollo and Mercury both fell in love with her. Mercury put her to sleep with the touch of his caduceus and raped her in her sleep. Then Apollo, disguised as an old crone, approached her and raped her again. This led Chione to openly boast that she was more beautiful than the goddess Diana herself, resulting in Diana shooting her through the tongue with an arrow.[7][8]

In 1994, the German historian Eckhard Sander published Schneewittchen: Märchen oder Wahrheit? (Snow White: Fairy Tale or True Story?), claiming he had uncovered an account that may have inspired the Grimms' fairy tale.[9] According to Sander, the character of Snow White was based on the life of Margaretha von Waldeck, daughter of Philip IV, Count of Waldeck-Wildungen (1493–1574) and his first wife, Countess Margaret Cirksena of Ostfriesland (1500–1537), daughter of Edzard I, Count of East Frisia. According to Bad Wildungen city documents, she was famous for her beauty.[10] Since 1539, she had a stepmother, Katharina von Hatzfeld (1510–1546), and perhaps soon after, Margaretha was raised at nearby Weilburg at the court of Philip III, Count of Nassau-Weilburg. In 1545, she traveled through the Siebengebirge ("seven hills") to live with her mother's brother Johann Cirksena (1506-1572) at Valkenburg Castle, in present-day Limburg, Netherlands.[11] In 1549, her father sent her on to the Brussels court of Mary of Hungary, governor of the Habsburg Netherlands and sister of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Margaretha's presence at the court was partially meant to improve the relationship of her father with the emperor and help the release of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, who had been imprisoned in Brussels for his role in the Schmalkaldic War.[10]

The situation at the court was complicated, as several high ranking personalities vied for Margaretha, including Lamoral, Count of Egmont. Charles V's son, Crown Prince Philip, arrived at his aunt's court in 1549. He reportedly pursued Margaretha during the few months he was there, as well, though no official relationship could occur, as she was Lutheran.[12] Three surviving letters from Margaretha to her father show that her health declined steadily over the next few years and she died at the age of 21 in March 1554.[13] Rumors held that her death was caused by poison. However, unlike Snow White, Margaretha's stepmother could not have been involved since her father's second wife died in 1546 and he only remarried again in October 1554.

Margaretha's father owned several copper mines; a majority of workers were children, and Sander suggested that the legendary seven dwarfs were inspired by child labor in the mine. The residence of the seven dwarfs has been suggested to be the former copper-mining village Bergfreiheit, now a district of Bad Wildungen that calls itself Schneewittchendorf (Snow White Village) as part of its tourism industry. Like the fairy tale's dwarfs, the child laborers there used to live in groups of about 20 in a single room house.

Sander theorized that other elements of the story were drawn from local folklore and different members of Margaretha's family. For instance, the element of the wicked mother figure paralleled the lives of Margaretha's sister-in-law and niece, and the wedding of Snow White paralleled the wedding of Margaretha's nephew. Both Margaretha's niece and niece-in-law shared her name.[9]

Karlheinz Bartels, a pharmacist from Lohr am Main in northwestern Bavaria, was part of a "study group" made up of friends who met regularly at a local pub. Inspired by a previous hoax which claimed to trace the real-life inspirations of Hansel and Gretel, he created a tongue-in-cheek theory that Snow White was Maria Sophia Margarethe Catharina, Baroness von und zu Erthal, born in Lohr on June 25, 1725.[14][15] Her gravestone was found in 2019.[16] Her father, Philipp Christoph von und zu Erthal, was the local representative of the Prince Elector of Mainz.[17] After the death of Maria Sophia's birth mother in 1738, her father remarried in 1743.

Bartels' fellow theorist Werner Loibl analyzed a surviving letter from the stepmother, Claudia Elisabeth von Reichenstein, which revealed that she answered Philipp Christoph's mail and handled important decisions while he was traveling abroad. Based on this, Loibl extrapolated that she was domineering and favored her children from her first marriage.[18] At the time he analyzed the letter, Loibl ran the Spessart Museum in the Lohr Castle (once owned by Philipp Christoph) and was in the process of adding several Snow White-themed exhibits.

Mirrors made in Lohr were said to always tell the truth due to their high quality and smooth surfaces that were unusually clear for the time. Lohr Castle was home to one such mirror during the time that Maria Sophia's stepmother lived there. Supporters of the theory compared it to the Magic Mirror in "Snow White." It was constructed by the Mirror Manufacture of the Electorate of Mainz in Lohr, and may have been in the castle as early as 1719. It can still be viewed there today.[19][20]

The dwarfs in Maria's story are also linked to a mining town, Bieber, located just west of Lohr and set among seven mountains. The smallest tunnels could only be accessed by very short miners, who often wore bright hoods, as the dwarfs have frequently been depicted over the years. The Lohr study group maintains that the glass coffin may be linked to the region's famous glassworks, while the poisoned apple may be associated with the deadly nightshade poison that grows in abundance in Lohr.[21]

Despite the joking origins of Bartels’s theory, it became popular as a marketing tactic for the local town.[19]

Virtually no serious scholars agree with Sander’s or Bartels’s theories. As stated by Professor Donald Haase, “There have been a couple of attempts to show that the story of Snow White is based on the fate of a historical figure, but they are pure speculation and not at all convincing.”[22] Bartels’ theory in particular is recognized as a joke.[23]