Every spring, I share a couple of stories from Heinrich Hoffmann’s children’s book “Der Struwwelpeter” (“Slovenly Peter”) with my students to practice the German past tense, and every time, students express their surprise at the level of violence displayed in these stories. The same happens every Halloween when I bring Wilhelm Busch’s children’s book “Max and Moritz” to class. Both books are classics, and like so many other German-speaking children, I grew up with them.

“Der Struwwelpeter” was published in 1845. Hoffmann, a physician who loved writing, wanted to buy his three-year-old a children’s book for Christmas, and when he couldn’t find anything, he decided to create his own. The illustrated book includes ten stories with mainly tragic endings. In one story, for example, Konrad keeps sucking his thumbs. His mother warns him the tailor will come and cut his thumbs off, but he keeps on sucking. And sure enough, the tailor comes and cuts them off. In another story, the mother tells Paulinchen not to play with matches. Yet the daughter plays with matches — and burns to death. No doubt, these are gruesome endings. But they do show children the consequences of not listening to their parents.

Wilhelm Bush, a painter and poet, published “Max and Moritz” twenty years later, in 1865. Along with many illustrations, the book follows Max and Moritz, two boys who play seven nasty pranks on adults: first killing a widow’s chickens, watching her cry over them, and then stealing the chickens from her after they have been roasted; putting gunpowder in the teacher’s smoking pipe so it explodes; hiding bugs in the uncle’s bed; and so on. In their last prank, however, the miller throws them in his mill and their remains are eaten by the ducks. Yes, that is a shocking ending indeed. But Max and Moritz had it coming.

Having grown up with these stories, I have never perceived them as violent until the students pointed this out to me. They of course are used to children’s stories ending on a good note. How many American children know, for instance, that “Aschenputtel” (“Cinderella”) actually closes with pigeons punishing the stepsisters for what they have done to Cinderella by picking out their eyes? Yes, that is awful. And as a child, I certainly found the ending of Cinderella and the other stories scary, and it certainly worked when my parents said, “Don’t play with matches, or you will end up like Paulinchen.” But are these stories really violent?

I looked up the word “violence” in Merriam-Webster. Two of its several definitions are, “the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage or destroy” and “intense, turbulent or furious and often destructive action or force.” Following both definitions, I have to admit, these stories are indeed violent. The tailor cuts off the thumbs, the miller throws Max und Moritz into the mill, and the pigeons pick out the stepsisters’ eyes, while Paulinchen’s action is clearly destructive. And still… I can’t bring myself to consider these stories violent. In my mind, they are tragic, scary or sad.

What I find violent are American movies.

Because my husband asked me so nicely, I agreed on watching “Novocaine” with him. The movie, labeled as “action comedy film,” features a man who, incapable of feeling physical pain, sets out to rescue the woman he loves from her kidnappers. I had my eyes closed for at least two thirds of the movie, and I chuckled only once or twice. I guess my understanding of humor differs vastly from the movie’s makers. I’m not sure what is so funny about watching different people torture another human being, even when that human being can’t feel any pain. If anything, I was disgusted at the creativity of coming up with such horrendous torturing methods.

Weeks earlier we also watched “Companion,” and I wasn’t too thrilled of seeing a “science fiction thriller film.” However, when the humanoid female robot that was technically incapable of harming humans killed someone, the movie really attracted my attention and I thought about having to change my initial negative attitude — until the second robot’s setting was set to one hundred percent aggression mode. Why robots that aren’t supposed to harm humans have an aggression setting in the first place, and then one of such brutality, will forever remain a riddle to me, but once that setting was activated, the robot kept smashing the police officer’s face even though the officer had already been long dead and unrecognizable. I had to close my eyes during that scene.

When my students point out the violence in the German children’s stories, I ask them if they have ever thought about the violence displayed in American movies, and they typically meet me with the same surprised face I exhibit when they gasp at those children’s stories. In the same way I have been numbed to the violence in those stories, the students consider violent movies normal. Yes, German-speaking movies are violent too, but the level and amount of brutality doesn’t even come close. And since the American movies have been unsuccessful in convincing me to find violence entertaining, I will stick with the German classics and relax with Hallmark-type comedies or movies where I can actually learn something. I really have had my fill of blood, shooting and smashing humans beyond recognition.

Dr. Daniela Ribitsch, a native of Austria, is a resident of Lock Haven.