Gravestone of Real-Life Snow White Inspiration Put on Display in German Museum

The long-lost gravestone of an 18th-century baroness believed by many to have inspired the Brothers Grimm to write Snow White and the Seven Dwars has gone on display in a German museum, having recently been rediscovered.

According to the BBC, the gravestone of Maria Sophia von Erthal, is now on display at the Diocesan Museum in Bamberg, southern Germany having been donated by a family who rescued the artifact in the 1970s when a new clinic was built on the site of the hospital it had previously been displayed in.

Sophia was the daughter of Prince Philipp von Erthal, owner of a mirror factory in Lohr am Main and, according to museum director Holger Kempkens, it is widely believed that her life was the inspiration for the popular fairy tale.

"The Brothers Grimm made literature out of the stories they heard from local people," Kempkens said. "There are indications -- though we cannot prove it for sure -- that Sophia was the model for Snow White. Today when you make a fil about a historic person there is also fiction in it. So in this case I think there is a historic basis, but there are also fictional elements.

Sophia, who was born in 1725, was said to have a strained and difficult relationship with her stepmother, Claudia Elisabeth Maria von Vernningen, the imperial countess of Reichenstein whom Sophia's father marred after the death of his first wife and there are a few other similarities between Sophia's life and the Brothers Grimm's story. The "magic mirror" element of the tale is believed to be inspired by Sophia's father's mirror business with one of the mirrors -- incscribed with "Amour propre", French for "self-love" -- still on display in a Lohr museum. The forest in the story is similar to the one near the town which was known for dangerous wild animals and criminals. In the story, Snow White has to travel over seven hills to reach the cottage where the dwarfs, who worked in a mine, lived and a real-life abandoned mine exists just seven hills away from Lohr. The mine also notably employed children – potentially the inspiration for the dwarves – during its time of operation.

However, not all of the details of Sophia's life line up with her fairy tale counterpart's. For Sophia, there was no prince or happy ending. She went blind in her youth and died an unmarried woman in a convent at the age of 71. For the museum, though, it's not the necessarily the fairy tale aspect of things that is of interest, it's the gravestone itself. It was uncommon in the late 18th period for women to have their own gravestones something that makes Sophia's something worth displaying without the story.

What do you think about Snow White's gravestone going on display in Germany? Let us know in the comments below.