A mirror finish.
The true tale of Snow White.
This is a sensational story. Buckle up. Your brain may need a white stick and a seeing-eye dog.
Read carefully and prepare your mind for the spin dryer.
The magic talking mirror from Snow White still exists.
Let that sink in.
I do mean the real mirror from, "Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"
Do not doubt it. The mirror still hangs on a wall in Bavaria. It proves to be the looking glass written about by the fairy tale masters the brothers Grimm in their Snow White story.
And we thought the whole tale was made up.
The truth of this is beautifully researched. You can see the real mirror at the Lohr Castle. A castle that looks very much like the one in the 1937 Walt Disney Snow White film.
Here is how the Disney imagineers saw the fabled mirror. Such stylish artistry. How wonderful would it be to float around a castle in such an exquisite purple cloak. How would you like to run your fingers around that queen's lovely cloak room? I got close very close to that when I found myself let loose in Liberace's actual closet. I am not tripping, I was there.
This is a spectacular animation. It was the very first animated full-length movie and I recommend you buy it and knock yourself out.
Here's the part where you put your reality check into holding pattern. There is plenty of evidence that Snow White is a true story.
Stupefyingly, all of the records, names, places and documents still exist and are held in the city archives at Lohr. These sources were checked and double checked by the chemist and historian, Karlheinz Bartels in Bavaria.
The story you know is all there. The sad, lovely princess made into a hard working slave by an evil stepmother monster. Then there's the prince, the dwarfs and the mirror.
Stories come from somewhere and this one came from Bavaria. Here are the facts. I'll make it quick and punchy. Settle back and munch on a poisoned apple.
The tales that made Walt Disney and others very rich were written by the Grimm brothers. They did not invent what we call fairy stories, they just wrote down the tales that people had told for centuries.
Folklore and myth was the Google of then. The Grimms were collectors and historians. Sometimes they rolled a couple of stories into one for better drama and romance.
With Snow White they took a local Germanic story and added some fables by a wonderful tale collector from Italy, Giovanni Battista Basile. The Grimms were his fanboys.
Basile's Italian story called The Young Slave is only vaguely like Snow White. It does have an evil stepmother but there's a baron instead of a prince. Most folktales have those sorts of people.
In Bavaria, history reveals that the true Snow White was a noble woman named Maria Sophia Margaretha Catherina von Erthal. She was born in that village of Lohr am Main in 1725. Locals recorded that she was known for her 'praiseworthy virtues', just like the lovely girl in the famous story. History books from that time called Maria Sophie an 'angel of mercy and kindness'. The town folk loved her.
Maria Sophia’s father remarried in 1743. The stepmother, Claudia Elisabeth von Reichenstein arrived and hated the existing children. Her bitch quotient was 10.
The famous talking mirror is in the Spessart Museum inside the Lohr Castle, where Maria Sophia was born and raised. It was a product of a famous Lohr Mirror Manufacturer, Kurmainzische Spiegelmanufaktur.
Lohr mirrors were said to tell the truth. They spoke the truth about the way people looked. These were known as talking mirrors. Oh yes they were.
If you can find an elaborately-worked Lohr mirror, they have messages about truth inscribed into the frames. This famous Snow White mirror in the Lohr castle says in fashionable French: 'Elle brille à la lumière' or, light shines from her. Thus, she is beautiful.
This is the original mirror at the castle.
The precise words written down by Wilhelm Grimm in the story were, "“Mirror, mirror, here I stand. Who is the fairest in the land?”
In the same way as the fairytale, Maria Sophia fled from her stepmother and met the dwarves around the mines at a town called Bieber 35 kilometres from the castle. The road and all the parts in the story are still there, even the signposts.
Snow White's wishing well is right there near the historian Dr. Bartel's pharmacy.
The mines dotted around the castle had children and dwarfs as miners. Larger people did not fit inside the tiny tunnels. The whole tale happened just a jot away from the famous crystal and quartz mines where the indelibly wonderful Bavarian crystal comes from. Look up! Low-flying chandelier!
In the story, after the poisoning of Snow White by the evil queen, the dwarfs display her in a beautiful crystal casket. The Lohr district was then acclaimed for its local glass makers of Spessart who made beautiful transparent boxes as well as windows.
Never quite explained in later versions of the story and the Disney feature was why the dwarfs put Snow White in a crystal casket. We have always assumed that it was better to show off her sleeping beauty. However there is another idea.
The evil queen became so frightened of the magic mirror when it began telling the truth about her fading beauty that she developed a psychological illness we now call crystallophobia. That is a morbid fear of reflections in glass and mirrors. and dangerous shattering. The vain and fearful stepmother would have been very unlikely to tamper with Snow White's crystal casket. The dwarfs were smart.
Now, let's get into the dangerous juice of the poisoned apple that caused Snow White or Maria Sophia to collapse into a coma. This entire region is filled with apple orchards. Some of the world's most deadly plants still grow alongside those apple trees. Atropa belladonna or the 'Black Cherry' has an anaesthetic effect that produces a sleeping rigor mortis that can kill people. You might know the plant as deadly nightshade. Dr, Bartel's chemical expertise was invaluable in matching the effects of a poison administered with a lethal dipped apple. But why would an aristocrat like Maria Sophie's mother head down the path of attempted murder of her pretty step-daughter?
In Charles Mackay's outstanding book from 1841, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, he explained the poisoning rage of the 16th and 17th Centuries:
"Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Women put poison bottles on their dressing-tables as openly, and used them with as little scruple upon others, as modern dames use eau de Cologne or lavender-water upon themselves."
Mackay says many graveyards of Europe were closed down when they overflowed with countless thousands of poisoned victims.
Run, Snow White, run!
It all adds up.
It's so great to know this dimension at last.
The evil queen would not be pleased.
