Is this a dative of possession? Is this syntax common?

Question

This is my second question about the beginning of Aschenputtel (see here for the first).

Einem reichen Manne, dem wurde seine Frau krank, und als sie fühlte, daß ihr Ende herankam, rief sie ihr einziges Töchterlein zu sich ans Bett und sprach: ...

There was a rich man whose wife became sick, and when she felt that her end was near, she called her only daughter to her to her bed and said...

I would like to ask about "Einem reichen Manne". Is this phrase a dative of possession?

I happen to know of a similar feature in Greek and Latin, which is actually what confuses me, because in those languages there is a conjugated form of "to be" included. What's interesting about the German construction is that not only does the possessor go in the dative, but the subject in the nominative can take on any verb. This is where it differs, you see, from Greek and Latin, since the subject in the nominative often takes on esse (Latin) or εἰμί (Greek).

I conclude by asking, is this a dative of possession, and is this syntax common? That is, the syntax of placing the possessor in the dative, and reserving any verb for the subject? Does the German construction not require a conjugated form of "to be" here?

Answer 1

Einem reichen Manne, dem wurde seine Frau krank.

Yes, this is dative of possession. The man is the owner of his wife, which perfectly fits into the philosophy of life from 1812, when this story was written. (This age of the text is also the reason for the e at the end of Manne, which is an outdated form to build dative case. In modern German it would be »Einem reichen Mann, ...«)

This is another sentence, that uses the same construction:

Mir ist mein Fahrrad kaputt gegangen.

This means: »My bicycle has broken down.« But you could have said this also in this sentence: »Mein Fahrrad ist kaputt gegangen« which is perfectly correct German. But it misses a subtile information, that is inside this special dative of possession: What is missing, is: »... and now I am suffering from this damage.«

You use this construction to tell two things:

1. Something, that is owned by the person named in dative case became damaged
2. The owner of the broken thing now feels sad or is suffering

But the focus is clearly on #1 (the damage itself). #2 is just a less important subtile side-effect.

So a translation of the first part of the sentence, that covers both aspects might be:

A rich man's wife became sick, which made this man suffer.

But if you write it this way, this suffering becomes much too prominent in the sentence. It looses it's subtile character, that it has in German.

Answer 2

What you face here is unusual word order together with dative instead of genitive:

Einem reichen Mann, dem wurde seine Frau krank. (speech, a lot of focus on the rich man)

Einem reichen Mann wurde seine Frau krank. (speech, focus on the rich man)

Eines reichen Mannes Frau wurde krank. (genitive, focus on the rich man)

Die Frau eines reichen Mannes wurde krank. (standard)

Dative is normally used instead of genitive in speech only, so there aren't too many rules about this. Dialects rule it, and fairy tales are captured as spoken, with only the most unintelligible dialect phrases removed.