"But they overcome, the danger and emerge from the forest happy," he points out. "The witch is the personification of the danger that lurks in the forest," said Aschenbrand. There, they must contend with a cannibalistic witch, recaps Erik Aschenbrand, manager of the Reinhardswald park. In the tale of Hänsel and Gretel, for instance, the unfortunate siblings are abandoned in the forest by their parents. Read more: German grandma proves hit with YouTube bedtime tales What's important is the the message behind the stories, as well as their setting: a dark and sinister woods home to all kinds of danger. Whether a princess really slept for 100 years is immaterial. The Grimms simply wrote down the stories that had been part of an oral folk tradition for generations. Read more: What's lurking in the German forest? Read more: 10 Brothers Grimm fairy tales you should know In fact, it was around this erstwhile heavily-forested place that the Brothers Grimm collected many of their fairytales, helping to cement the forest's central place in the German imagination. According to German fairytales, a particular beauty slept here for 100 years before being awoken by her prince Image: picture alliance/dpa/F. And Rapunzel let down her long golden hair from a tower so her rescuer could clamber up. Near Reinhardswald, a courageous prince was said to have awoken sleeping beauty from her long slumber with true love's first kiss. The woodland is at the heart of a 600-kilometer (372-mile) route once home to magic mirrors, fairy godmothers, princesses, and goblins - if legends are to be believed.
Few places in Germany are as brimming with tales of mythical beings as Reinhardswald.
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