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Brothers Grimm

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For other uses, see Brothers Grimm (disambiguation).
Wilhelm (left) and Jacob Grimm (right) from an 1855 painting by Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann
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1000 Deutsche Mark (1992)

The Brothers Grimm (‹See Tfd›German: Die Brüder Grimm or Template:Lang-de2), Jakob Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (24 February 1786 – 16 December 1859), were German academics best known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales, which subsequently became very popular.[1] Jakob also carried out academic work in philology, related to how the sounds in words shift over time (Grimm's law). They can be counted along with Karl Lachmann and Georg Friedrich Benecke as founding fathers of Germanic philology and German studies. The brothers began to compile the first German dictionary, but only managed to get as far as the letter F.

They are among the best-known story tellers of European folk tales, and their work popularized such stories as "Cinderella" (Aschenputtel), "The Frog Prince" (Der Froschkönig), "Hansel and Gretel" (Hänsel und Gretel), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" (Rumpelstilzchen), "Sleeping Beauty" (Dornröschen), and "Snow White" (Schneewittchen).

Life

Origin and early life

Grimm Brothers Monument at Hanau (Germany).

Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm (also Karl) and Wilhelm Karl Grimm[a] were born on 4 January 1785 and 24 February 1786 respectively, in the Wolfgang section of Hanau, Germany near Frankfurt in Hessen, the sons of Philipp Wilhelm Grimm, a jurist and bailiff with offices at Schlüchtern and Steinau, originally from Hanau, and Henrietta Dorothea Grimm, née Henrietta Dorothea Wild, a former neighbor and the daughter of an apothecary.[2] They were among a family of nine children, six of whom survived infancy.[3] Their early childhood was spent in the countryside. The Grimm family lived near the magistrate's house between 1790 and 1796 while the father was employed by the Prince of Hessen.

Graves of the Brothers Grimm in the St Matthäus Kirchhof Cemetery in Schöneberg, Berlin.
Berlin memorial plaque, Brüder Grimm, Alte Potsdamer Straße 5, Berlin-Tiergarten, Germany
Sculpture of brothers Grimm in Hanau

When the eldest brother, Jakob, was 15 years old, their father, Philip Wilhelm, died and the family moved into a cramped urban residence.[3] Two years later, the children's grandfather also died, leaving their mother to struggle to support them in reduced circumstances.[4] "They urged fidelity to the spoken text, without embellishments, and though it has been shown that they did not always practice what they preached, the idealized 'orality' of their style was much closer to reality than the literary retellings previously thought necessary."[5] Others argue that "scholars and psychiatrists have thrown a camouflaging net over the stories with their relentless, albeit fascinating, question of 'What does it mean?'"[6] Another possible environmental influence can be discerned in the selection of stories such as The Twelve Brothers, which mirrors the collectors' family structure of one girl and several brothers overcoming opposition.[7]

The two brothers were educated at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Kassel and later both studied law at the University of Marburg. There they were inspired by their professor Friedrich von Savigny, who awakened an interest in the past. They were in their early twenties when they began the linguistic and philological studies that would culminate in both Grimm's law and their collected editions of fairy and folk tales. Though their collections of tales became immensely popular, they were essentially a by-product of the linguistic research, which was the brothers' primary goal.

In 1808, Jakob Grimm was appointed court librarian to the King of Westphalia. In 1812 the brothers published their first volume of fairy tales, Tales of Children and the Home. They had collected the stories from peasants and villagers; they were also aided by their close friend August von Haxthausen. In their collaboration, Jacob did more of the research, while Wilhelm, less sturdy, put the work into a literary form that would appeal to children. They were also interested in folklore and primitive literature. In 1816 Jacob became a librarian in Kassel, where Wilhelm was also employed. Between 1816 and 1818, they published two volumes of German legends and a volume of early literary history.

In time, the brothers became interested in older languages and their relation to German. Jakob began to specialize in the history and structure of the Germanic languages, devising a theory that became known as Grimm's law, based on immense amounts of data. In 1830, they moved together to Göttingen, where both secured positions at the University of Göttingen.[8] Jakob was named professor and head librarian in 1830, Wilhelm a professor in 1835.

In 1837, the Brothers Grimm joined five of their colleague professors at the University of Göttingen, later known as the Göttingen Seven, in protesting against the abrogation of the liberal constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover by King Ernest Augustus I, the reactionary son of King George III. They were fired from their university posts and three were deported, including Jakob Grimm, who with Wilhelm settled in Kassel, outside Ernest's realm, at the home of their brother Ludwig. However, the next year brought an invitation to Berlin from the King of Prussia.[9]

Their last years were spent in writing a definitive dictionary, the Deutsches Wörterbuch, the first volume being published in 1854. The work was carried on by future generations.

The Tales

Main article: Grimm's Fairy Tales

The Brothers Grimm began collecting folk tales[10] around 1806, in response to a wave of awakened interest in German folklore that followed the publication of Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano's folksong collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Youth's Magic Horn"), 1805–08. By 1810 the Grimms produced a manuscript collection of several dozen tales, which they had recorded by inviting storytellers to their home and transcribing what they heard. Although they were said to have collected tales from peasants, many of their informants were middle-class or aristocratic, recounting tales they had heard from their servants. Several of the informants were of Huguenot ancestry and told tales that were French in origin.[11] Some scholars have theorized that certain elements of the stories were "purified" for the brothers, who were devout Christians.[12]

In 1812, the Brothers published a collection of 86 German fairy tales in a volume titled Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales). They published a second volume of 70 fairy tales in 1814 ("1815" on the title page), which together make up the first edition of the collection, containing 156 stories. They wrote a two-volume work titled Deutsche Sagen, which included 585 German legends; these were published in 1816 and 1818.[13] The legends are organized in the chronological order of historical events to which they were related.[14] The brothers arranged the regional legends thematically for each folktale creature, such as dwarfs, giants, monsters, etc. not in any historical order.[14] These legends were not as popular as the fairytales.[13]

A second edition of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen followed in 1819–22, expanded to 170 tales. Five more editions were issued during the Grimms' lifetimes,[15] in which stories were added or subtracted. The seventh edition of 1857 contained 211 tales. Many of the changes were made in light of unfavorable reviews, particularly those that objected that not all the tales were suitable for children, despite the title.[16] The tales were also criticized for being insufficiently German; this not only influenced the tales the brothers included, but their language. They changed "fee" (fairy) to an enchantress or wise woman, every prince to a king's son, every princess to a king's daughter.[17] (It has long been recognized that some of these later-added stories were derived from printed rather than oral sources.) [18] These editions, equipped with scholarly notes, were intended as serious works of folklore. The Brothers also published the Kleine Ausgabe or "small edition," containing a selection of 50 stories expressly designed for children (as opposed to the more formal Große Ausgabe or "large edition"). Ten printings of the "small edition" were issued between 1825 and 1858.

The Grimms were not the first to publish collections of folktales. There were others, including a German collection by Johann Karl August Musäus published in 1782–87. The earlier collections, however, made little pretence to strict fidelity to sources. The Brothers Grimm were the first workers in this genre to present their stories as faithful renditions of the kind of direct folkloric materials that underlay the sophistication of an adapter like Perrault. In so doing, the Grimms took a basic and essential step toward modern folklore studies, leading to the work of folklorists like Peter and Iona Opie[19] and others.

The Grimms' method was common in their historical era. Arnim and Brentano edited and adapted the folksongs of Des Knaben Wunderhorn; in the early 19th century Brentano collected folktales in much the same way as the Grimms.[20] The early researchers were working before academic practices for such collections had been codified. It has been pointed out recently that the origins of many of the tales collected orally by the Grimms lay in French and Italian written collections of earlier centuries.[21]

Linguistics

In the very early 19th century, the time in which the Brothers Grimm lived, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had recently dissolved, and the modern nation of Germany did not exist. In its place was a confederacy of 39 small- to medium-size German states, many of which had been newly created by Napoleon as client states. The major unifying factor for the German people of the time was a common language. Part of what motivated the Brothers in their writings and in their lives was the desire to help create a German identity.

Less well known to the general public outside of Germany is the Brothers' work on a German dictionary, the Deutsches Wörterbuch. It was extensive, having 33 volumes and weighing 84 kg (185 lbs). It is still considered the standard reference for German etymology. Work began in 1838, but by the end of their lifetime, only sections from the letter 'A' to part of the letter 'F' were completed. The work was not considered complete until 1960.[22]

Jacob is recognized for enunciating Grimm's law, the Germanic Sound Shift, that was first observed by the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask. Grimm's law was the first non-trivial systematic sound change to be discovered.

Books, film and television

  • In 1977, a made-for-TV musical called Once Upon A Brothers Grimm aired in the United States. It starred Dean Jones as Jakob and Paul Sand as Wilhelm. The basic plot presented the brothers traveling and getting lost in a forest, and encountering various characters from the tales that made them famous.
  • In 1998, in the movie Ever After, the Grimm Brothers visit an elderly woman, the Grande Dame of France, who questions their version of the Cinderella story. The Brothers Grimm reply that there was no way for them to verify the authenticity of their story as there were so many different versions. She proceeds to tell the story of "Danielle De Barbarac".
  • In 2001, a Grimme Prize-nominated German TV crime thriller, titled A Murderous Fairytale (Ein mörderisches Märchen), used elements of Brothers Grimm fairytales. In the film directed by Manuel Siebenmann and written by Daniel Martin Eckhart, the elderly killer challenges the detectives with a series of Brothers Grimm fairytale riddles.
  • In 2002, comic book writer Bill Willingham created the comic book Fables, which includes characters from "fables" as the main characters. Many of these characters are among those collected by the Grimm brothers.
  • In 2005, a movie based roughly on the Grimm brothers and their tales was made called The Brothers Grimm, starring Heath Ledger as Jacob Grimm and Matt Damon as Wilhelm Grimm. The film, directed by Terry Gilliam, resembles the contents of the sagas from the brothers' collections, much more than the academic nature of their lives.
  • In 2005, author Michael Buckley began a popular young reader's series (geared for age 7–12) titled The Sisters Grimm, in which the two characters, sisters, are the direct descendants of the Brothers Grimm. They discover the family secret in which the fairy tales told in their ancestor's stories are not fictional, but instead all exist in a fairy tale realm. The sisters are brought into that realm to solve mysteries that sometimes spill into their world.
  • In 2005, Zenescope Comics] begin releasing a monthly on-going comic series titled Grimm Fairy Tales. Grimm Fairy Tales is a horror comic book that presents classic fairy tales, albeit with modern twists or expanded plots.
  • In 2006, writer John Connolly publishes a book named "The Book Of Lost Things". This book includes many darker adaptions of the Grimm's tales; including Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin.
  • In 2006, the crime novel Brother Grimm, by Craig Russell, was published. A serial killer stalks Hamburg and uses themes of Brothers Grimm fairytales to pose his victims and to write riddles about the next one. Chief Detective Jan Fabel has to hunt down the Fairytale Killer, as the press soon calls him. In 2010, the novel was adapted for German television, directed by Urs Egger and written by Daniel Martin Eckhart under the title Wolfsfährte, the German title of Craig Russell's novel. Actor Peter Lohmeyer took on the role of Chief Detective Jan Fabel.
  • In 2010 a book The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman was published about a girl who starts working at a mysterious museum which holds items from Grimm fairy tales
  • In 2010, Lethe Press published A Twist of Grimm by William Holden, a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales re-imagined as gay erotica.

Notes

a. ^ The Neue Deutsche Biographie records their names as "Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Carl"[24] and "Grimm, Wilhelm Carl".[25] The Deutsches Biographisches Archive records Wilhelm's name as "Grimm, Wilhelm Karl".[25] The Allgemeine deutsche Biographie gives the names as "Grimm: Jacob (Ludwig Karl)"[26] and "Grimm: Wilhelm (Karl)".[27] The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints also gives Wilhelm's name as "Grimm, Wilhelm Karl".[25]

Citations

  1. ^ Zipes 2002
  2. ^ History of the Grimms, accessdate = 2011-03-13.
  3. ^ a b Michaelis-Jena 1970, p. 9
  4. ^ It has been argued that this is the reason behind the brothers' tendency to idealize and excuse fathers, leaving a predominance of female villains in the tales—the infamous wicked stepmothers, for example, the evil stepmother and stepsisters in "Cinderella", but this disregards the fact that they were collectors, not authors of the tales.Alister & Hauke 1998, pp. 216–219
  5. ^ Simpson & Roud 2000
  6. ^ Thomas O'Neill, National Geographic, December 1999
  7. ^ Tatar 2004, p. 37
  8. ^ "Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm", Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd e., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002.
  9. ^ Die Brueder Grimm Timeline at DieBruederGrimm.de, Retrieved 4 February 2007
  10. ^ James M. McGlathery, ed., The Brothers Grimm and Folktale, Champaigne, University of Illinois Press, 1988
  11. ^ Zipes 1998, pp. 69–70
  12. ^ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, 'Women Who Run with the Wolves, p 15 ISBN 0-345-40987-6
  13. ^ a b Michaelis-Jena 1970, p. 84
  14. ^ a b Kamenstsky, Christa. The Brothers Grimm & Their Critics: Folktales the Quest for Meaning. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1992
  15. ^ Two volumes of the second edition were published in 1819, with a third volume in 1822. The third edition appeared in 1837; fourth edition, 1840; fifth edition, 1843; sixth edition, 1850; seventh edition, 1857. All were of two volumes, except for the three-volume second edition. Donald R. Hettinga, The Brothers Grimm: Two Lives, One Legacy, New York, Clarion Books, 2001; p. 154
  16. ^ Tatar 1987, pp. 15–17
  17. ^ Tatar 1987, p. 31
  18. ^ Kathleen Kuiper, Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, Springfield, MA, Merriam-Webster, 1995, p. 494; Valerie Paradiz, Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales, New York, Basic Books, 2005, p. xii. One example: the tale "All Fur," Allerleirauh, in the 1857 collection derives from Carl Nehrlich's 1798 novel Schilly. Laura Gonzenbach, Beautiful Angiola: The Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales, London, Rootledge, 2003; p. 345
  19. ^ Peter and Iona Opie. The Classic Fairy Tales, London, Oxford University Press, 1974, is the most famous of their many works in the field
  20. ^ Ellis, One Fairy Story too Many, pp. 2–7
  21. ^ See Ruth Bottigheimer: Fairy tales, old wives and printing presses. History Today, 31 December 2003. Retrieved 3 March 2011. Subscription required.
  22. ^ Grimm Brothers' Home Page, University of Pittsburgh, Retrieved 28 February 2007
  23. ^ IMDb.com
  24. ^ Deutsche National Bibliothek, citing Neue Deutsche Biographie.
  25. ^ a b c Deutsche National Bibliothek, citing Neue Deutsche Biographie, Deutsches Biographisches Archiv and The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints.
  26. ^ Template:Cite-ADB
  27. ^ Template:Cite-ADB

References

  • Alister, Ian; Hauke, Christopher, eds. (1998), Contemporary Jungian Analysis, London: Routledge, ISBN 0415141664
  • Michaelis-Jena, Ruth (1970), The Brothers Grimm, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ISBN 0710064497
  • Simpson, Jacqueline; Roud, Steve (2000), A Dictionary of English Folklore, Oxford University Press, ISBN 019210019X
  • Tatar, Maria (1987), The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-06722-8
  • Tatar, Maria (2004), The Annotated Brothers Grimm, W.W. Norton & Co, ISBN 0-393-05848-4
  • Zipes, Jack (1988), The Brothers Grimm, Routledge Kegan and Paul, ISBN 0416019110
  • Zipes, Jack (1998), When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-92151-1
  • Zipes, Jack (2002), The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World, Palgrave MacMillan, ISBN 978-0312293802
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