It was adapted by French writer Alexandre Dumas in 1844. Hoffmann in 1816, titled 'The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.' The nutcracker gained international recognition thanks to its various cultural representations, and the fact that authors from different countries borrowed from the original tale. International copyright agreements didn't exist when an initial version of the little toy figure's story was written by German Romantic author E. Thieme A German-French-Russian-American story Not nearly as famous as the nutcracker: the traditional Räuchermännchen Image: picture-alliance/dpa/W. It's just one of the many traditional Christmas decorations from the Erzgebirge, or Ore Mountains, a Saxony border region renowned for folk art in the form of wooden angels, Christmas pyramids and candle arches known as Schwibbogen.īut the fact that no one ever came up with a proper English translation for the little smoking man suggests it isn't yet one of the region's famous international exports - unlike its direct cousin, another wooden figure traditionally made in the Ore Mountains: the nutcracker. Marie awakes with her arm mysteriously bandaged (probably by the Nutcracker), must to the concern of her family.Ever heard of a Räuchermann - or in its diminutive form, the Räuchermännchen? The 'smoking man' is a wooden figurine that serves as an incense burner. (You won’t find her in Tchaikovsky’s ballet.) She argues with her husband over scraps of food, and the King then asks a human/magician sort of man to fabricate mousetraps to catch and punish his quarrelsome wife. Just to make it all stranger, the Mouse Queen then makes an appearance. She goes to sleep and has a fevered dream as a result of her injury. She then faints and falls into the glass door of the toy cabinet, injuring her arm.

When it seems that the mice are winning, Marie throws a shoe at the Mouse King.

Mice appear, the Nutcracker and the toys in her toy cabinet come to life and a seven-headed Mouse King appears to lead his troops in battle against the toys. Her parents agree to let her stay up late and while she lingers near the Christmas tree, a surreal scene unfolds.

In it, a young girl named Marie asks her parents if she may stay in the living room and go to bed late so she can spend a little more time to comfort the nutcracker that she received as a Christmas present her brother broke its jaw and it is now bandaged. If you go back to read Hoffmann’s story, I think you will agree that it is raw and troubling. To be correct, Hoffmann’s story did not directly serve as the basis for the ballet, which Tchaikovsky based on a somewhat sentimentalized adaptation of the story (“Histoire d’un casse-noisette”) that Alexandre Dumas published in France in 1844.

Hoffman's nutcracker