Tell a Story – When Fire Was Our Library

It is evening. No electricity. No screen. No background noise. Only the crackling of fire.

A circle of people sits in the half-dark. Sparks rise into the sky. The light traces lines into faces, shadows beneath eyes, warm cheeks, attentive gazes. Each flicker shifts the features a little. And one person begins to speak.

Not from a book. Not from a page. But from memory. This is how culture began.

Before there was writing, people told stories. They told of the winter that was coming. Of plants that healed. Of paths one was not permitted to walk. Of strangers who could not be trusted. Of courage that proved worthwhile.

Knowledge survived only if it was passed on.

Later, Germanic tribes carved their runes into wood, often into beech wood. From these carved marks came the word "Buchstabe" — the German word for letter, rooted in beech wood. From wood came writing. From writing came the book.

But long before that, storytelling itself was memory. Experience was shaped into words that conjured images in the mind.

What we call fairy tales today was, for centuries, condensed experience expressed in images, symbols, and figures.

The forest was not merely a forest — it was a trial. The witch was not merely a character — she was a warning. The hero was not merely a hero — he was hope.

In such images, the world could be grasped.

When the Brothers Grimm began collecting stories, they were not simply writing down texts. They were preserving something that had until then existed only in the space between people — in parlors, in workshops, in fields, by hearths.

Every story had already been tested, retold, altered, refined. Like a stone worn smooth by a river.

Whoever tells a story creates spaces with words. A listener sees forests, though sitting in a room. They hear footsteps on gravel, though all is quiet. They sense danger, though they are safe.

And while the story is being told, something very simple happens. People sit together. One listens. One responds to another. A pause arises, a smile, a quiet laugh.

Something shared is created in the moment of telling.

"International Tell a Fairy Tale Day" reminds us of something very ancient.

Perhaps this evening it is enough to pass on a story. A memory. A fable. A fairy tale.

Whoever tells a story continues something older than any book.

B.