page_title: Till Eulenspiegel
section_title: Origin and historicity
hierarchical_section_title: Till Eulenspiegel / Origin and historicity
caption_attribution_description: English: Kneitlingen, general view from the South, Lower Saxony, Germany
context_page_description: Till Eulenspiegel is the protagonist of a German chapbook published in 1515 with a possible background in earlier Middle Low German folklore.
  Eulenspiegel is a native of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg whose picaresque career takes him to many places throughout the Holy Roman Empire.
  He plays practical jokes on his contemporaries, exposing vices at every turn. His life is set in the first half of the 14th century, and the final chapters of the chapbook describe his death from the plague of 1350.
  His name translates to "owl mirror", and the frontispiece of the 1515 chapbook, as well as his alleged tombstone in Mölln, Schleswig-Holstein, display the name in rebus writing by an owl and a hand mirror. There is a suggestion that the name is in fact a veiled pun on a Low German phrase translating to "wipe-arse".
  Retellings of the Eulenspiegel tradition have been published in modern literature, since the later 19th century. Notably, The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak by Charles De Coster transfers the character to the context of the Reformation and the Dutch Revolt. The Ulenspiegel from this novel became a symbol of the Flemish Movement.
context_section_description: According to the chapbook, Eulenspiegel was born in Kneitlingen in Lower Saxony near Brunswick around 1300. As a vagrant (Landfahrer), he travelled through the Holy Roman Empire, especially Northern Germany, but also the Low Countries, Bohemia, and Italy. 
  He is said to have died in Mölln, Schleswig-Holstein, near Lübeck and Hamburg, of the Black Death in 1350.
  The first known chapbook on Eulenspiegel was printed in c. 1510–1512 in Strasbourg.  It is  reasonable to place the folkloristic origins of the tradition in the 15th century, although, in spite of often-repeated suggestions to the effect "that the name 'Eulenspiegel' was used in tales of rogues and liars in Lower Saxony as early as 1400", 15th-century references to a Till Eulenspiegel  turn out to be surprisingly elusive. 
  The text of the first extant edition, printed by Johannes Grüninger, is in the High German language. 
  There has been a debate surrounding the possible existence of an older Low German edition, now lost.
  This version has been attributed to Hans Dorn, the only known printer active in Brunswick at the beginning of the 16th century (active from at least 1502). Sodmann (1980) in support of this hypothesis adduced the woodcut of a fool on horseback holding a hand mirror used by Dorn in later prints, as the title illustration of his Liber vagatorum and Grobianus, which may originally have served as the title illustration of the lost Eulenspiegel edition.
  There are several suggestions as to the author of the 1510 chapbook, none of which has gained mainstream acceptance. 
  Candidates include Thomas Murner, Hermann Bote,  Hieronymus Brunschwig, or an author collective surrounding Johannes Grüninger, including Thomas Murner,  Johannes Adelphus, Tilemann Conradi and Hermannus Buschius.
  The author of the 1515 edition in a short preface identifies himself only as "N". He gives the year 1500 as the date when he originally began to collect the tales, stressing the difficulty of the project and how he wanted to abandon it several times, saying that he is now publishing it after all to "lighten the mood in hard times". The preface also announces the inclusion of material from Pfaff Amis and Pfaff vom Kahlenberg, but no such material is present in the 1515 edition.
  The literal translation of the High German name "Eulenspiegel" is "owl mirror" (hence owle-glasse). It is both innocuous and indicative of his character and has been explained as a garbled form of an expression for "wipe-the-arse". 
  Many of Till's  pranks are scatological in nature, and involve tricking people into touching, smelling, or even eating Till's excrement.
  Scatological stories abound, beginning with Till's early childhood (in which he rides behind his father and exposes his rear-end to the townspeople) and persisting until his death bed (where he tricks a priest into soiling his hands with feces).
  In modern scholarship, there have been some attempts to find evidence for the historicity of Till Eulenspiegel's person. 
  Hucker (1980) mentions that according to a contemporary legal register of the city of Brunswick one Till van Cletlinge ("Till from/of Kneitlingen") was incarcerated there in the year 1339, along with four of his accomplices, for highway robbery.
  In Mölln, the reported site of Eulenspiegel's death and burial in the plague year of 1350, a memorial stone was commissioned by the town council in 1544, now on display in an alcove on the outside wall of the tower of St. Nicolai church. The stone is inscribed in Low German, as follows:
  Anno 1350 is dusse / steen upgehaven und / Tyle ulen spegel lenet / hier under begraven. / Marcket wol und / dencket dran. wat / ick gwest si up eren. / All de hir vor aver / gan. moten mi / glick weren.
  
  This stone was carved in 1350, and Tyl Ulenspegel lies buried underneath. Note well and remember what I have been on Earth.  All those who pass here will become as I am now.
  The inscription (including the date of 1350) was allegedly copied from an older tombstone, now lost. This older tombstone is referred to in the chapbook of 1515, and it is mentioned as
caption: Kneitlingen, the place of birth of Till Eulenspiegel
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