The dragon is difficult to deal with both directly and thematically.
Unless it is the hazel worm, the smaller cousin of the lindworm, which, according to the handbook of German superstitions, is known in Pomerania and Lusatia and apparently fits under the eponymous bush in size.
But be careful, the fable epic “Froschmeuseler” by the early modern writer and preacher Georg Rollenhagen describes it like this: “The hazel worm / and crept along / as if it were a big sea eagle / with a hard, pointed beak / with pike zeen / and tongues forked / pale black at the top / down below go pale / looked like the real devil.”
Axel Weidemann
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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Two new picture books deal with the dragon as the most fabulous of all beings and with its cosmos of ideas.
They cut a very different figure.
With his book "Dragon", the Swedish illustrator Johan Egerkrans presents a kind of illustrated miniature best-of international dragon legends, while the Polish children's book author and game designer Nikola Kucharska paints hidden objects for herself and the viewer "what incredible things real dragons like to do".
Dragons play a role in creation myths around the world.
What kind of creature must it have been out of whose dead body the Babylonian god Marduk formed half the ground and half the roof of the sky?
But you don't have to start with Tiamat straight away: Even those who have dealt with one of the notorious domestic dragons prefer to wash themselves with all water.
Now these originally godlike beings have often undergone a kind of long-distance domestication, from the ancient Egyptian sun-eater Apep to handy children's toys made of rubber.
Grisu, the little dragon, who wanted to be a fireman, is an exception.
He's cute, but smart as a flash.
In general, a dragon consists of everything that can be dangerous to humans: the mouth of a snake, the teeth and claws of a predator, armored and winged, it also breathes fire.
As is so often the case, primal human fears have degraded this miraculous creature, apart from standard signs and heraldry, at least in the West, primarily to a common monster: In the Bible as Leviathan, it is still impressively apocalyptic - "He makes the deep sea boil like a pot" (Job 41:23) -, he withers away through Christian influences to the one-sided incarnation of the devil and further to the greedy "land devastator, devourer of people and guardian of treasures".
That would finally bring him down to human level.
The more modern fantasy literature after Tolkien - whose Smaug: at best a sleepless big capitalist - has rehabilitated him with few exceptions, so that he no longer only stands in the way of the development of civilization as a destructive-chaotic element, but actually promotes it: In Michael Ende's "Jim Button “ Mrs. Mahlzahn becomes the golden dragon of wisdom.
In Bernhard Hennen's cycle of elves, dragons engage in a political chess game about the fate of a world forsaken by the gods.
In the role-playing universe of Shadowrun, the great dragon Dunkelzahn even becomes the seventh President of the United Canadian and American States (UCAS) in 2057.