Brothers Grimm Stories

[Anjali Reyome]

Jacoband Wilhelm Grimm were two of ten children from Dorothea (ne Zimmer) and Philipp Wilhelm Grimm. Philipp was a highly regarded district magistrate in Steinau an der Strae, about 50 kilometres (31 mi) from Hanau. Jacob and Wilhelm were sent to school for a classical education once they were of age, while their father was working. They were very hard-working pupils throughout their education. They followed in their father's footsteps and started to pursue a degree in law, and German history. In 1796, their father died at the age of 44 from pneumonia. This was a tragic time for the Grimms because the family lost all financial support and relied on their aunt, Henriette Zimmer, and grandfather, Johann Hermann Zimmer. At the age of 11, Jacob was compelled to be head of the household and provide for his family. After downsizing their home because of financial reasons, Henriette sent Jacob and Wilhelm to study at the prestigious high school, Lyzeum, in Kassel. In school, their grandfather wrote to them saying that because of their current situation, they needed to apply themselves industriously to secure their future welfare.[1]

Shortly after attending Lyzeum, their grandfather died and they were again left to themselves to support their family in the future. The two became intent on becoming the best students at Lyzeum, since they wanted to live up to their deceased father. They studied more than twelve hours a day and established similar work habits. They also shared the same bed and room at school. After four years of rigorous schooling, Jacob graduated head of his class in 1802. Wilhelm contracted asthma and scarlet fever, which delayed his graduation by one year although he was also head of his class. Both were given special dispensations for studying law at the University of Marburg. They particularly needed this dispensation because their social standing at the time was not high enough to have normal admittance. University of Marburg was a small, 200-person university where most students were more interested in activities other than schooling. Most of the students received stipends even though they were the richest in the state. The Grimms received no stipends because of their social standing but were content since this kept the distractions away.[1]

Jacob attended the university first. He reportedly showed proof of his hard work ethic and quick intelligence.[citation needed] Wilhelm joined Jacob at the university, and Jacob drew the attention of Professor Friedrich Carl von Savigny, founder of its historical school of law. He became a prominent personal and professional influence on the brothers. Throughout their time at university, the brothers became quite close with Savigny and were able to use his personal library as they became interested in German law, history, and folklore. Savigny asked Jacob to join him in Paris as an assistant, and Jacob went with him for a year. While he was gone, Wilhelm became very interested in German literature and started collecting books. Once Jacob returned to Kassel in 1806, he adopted his brother's passion and changed his focus from law to German literature. While Jacob studied literature and took care of their siblings, Wilhelm continued on to receive his degree in law at Marburg.[1] During the Napoleonic Wars, Jacob interrupted his studies to serve the Hessian War Commission.[2]

In 1808, their mother died, and this was especially hard on Jacob as he took the position of father figure, while also trying to be a brother. From 1806 to 1810, the Grimm family had barely enough money to properly feed and clothe themselves. During this time, Jacob and Wilhelm were concerned about the stability of the family.

Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano were good friends of the brothers and wanted to publish folk tales, so they asked the brothers to collect oral tales for publication. The Grimms collected many old books and asked friends and acquaintances in Kassel to tell tales and to gather stories from others. Jacob and Wilhelm sought to collect these stories in order to write a history of old German Poesie and to preserve history.[1]

The first volume of the first edition was published in 1812, containing 86 stories; the second volume of 70 stories followed in 1815. For the second edition, two volumes containing the Kinder- und Hausmrchen (KHM) texts were issued in 1819 and the appendix was removed and published separately in the third volume in 1822, totaling 170 tales. The third edition appeared in 1837, the fourth edition in 1840, the fifth edition in 1843, the sixth edition in 1850, and the seventh edition in 1857. Stories were added, and also removed, from one edition to the next, until the seventh held 210 tales. Some later editions were extensively illustrated, first by Philipp Grot Johann and, after his death in 1892, by German illustrator Robert Leinweber.[citation needed]

The Grimms believed that the most natural and pure forms of culture were linguistic and based in history.[2] Their work influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe, in a spirit of romantic nationalism, that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence.[6] Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjrnsen and Jrgen Moe, the English Joseph Jacobs, and Jeremiah Curtin, an American who collected Irish tales.[7] There was not always a pleased reaction to their collection. Joseph Jacobs was in part inspired by his complaint that English children did not read English fairy tales;[8] in his own words, "What Perrault began, the Grimms completed".

W. H. Auden praised the collection during World War II as one of the founding works of Western culture.[9] The tales themselves have been put to many uses. Adolf Hitler praised them so strongly that the Allies of World War II warned against them, as Hitler thought they were folkish tales showing children with sound racial instincts seeking racially pure marriage partners;[10] for instance, Cinderella with the heroine as racially pure, the stepmother as an alien, and the prince with an unspoiled instinct being able to distinguish.[11] Writers who have written about the Holocaust have combined the tales with their memoirs, as Jane Yolen in her Briar Rose.[12]

"Grimms' Fairy Tales in English" by D.L. Ashliman provides a hyperlinked list of 50 to 100 English-language collections that have been digitized and made available online. They were published in print from the 1820s to 1920s. Listings may identify all translators and illustrators who were credited on the title pages, and certainly identify some others.[13]

Two hundred years ago, two young German librarians by the names of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published a collection of tales that would become one of the most influential works of folklore in Germany, Europe, and eventually the world.

Between 1812 and 1857, seven editions of their tales appeared, each one different from the last, until the final, best-known version barely resembled the first. Given that the first edition has recently been honored in bicentenary celebrations throughout the world, it is perhaps a good time to reexamine what we think we know about the original tales of the Brothers Grimm.

This first edition is wholly unlike the so-called definitive edition of 1857. In the process of publishing seven different editions over forty years, the Grimms made vast changes in the contents and style. The stories in the first edition are closer to the oral tradition than the tales of the final, which can be regarded more as a literary collection, because Wilhelm, the younger brother, continually honed the tales so that they would resonate with a growing literary public. Their books would become second in popularity only to the Bible in German-speaking lands. By the twentieth century, they would become the most famous collection of folk and fairy tales in the western world.

Despite difficult personal problems and meager financial support from 1805 to 1812, the brothers proved themselves to be innovative scholars in the new field of German philology by publishing articles and books on medieval literature. In fact, they would be surprised to learn that they are more famous today for their tales than for their superb philological studies, which include pioneering work on German sound shifts, and the founding of the voluminous German Dictionary in 1854. But it was their training in philology and the demands that they placed on themselves as researchers that assisted their collecting and editing the tales.

Although the young Grimms had not entirely formalized their concept of folklore while they worked on the publication of the first edition, they held to their original principle: to salvage relics from the past. They intended to trace and grasp the essence of cultural evolution and to demonstrate how natural language, stemming from the needs, customs, and rituals of the common people, created authentic bonds and helped forge civilized communities. This is one of the reasons why they called their collection of tales an educational manual (Erziehungsbuch), for the tales recalled the basic values of the Germanic people through storytelling. The Grimms wanted to bequeath the oral tales to the German people, not realizing that these tales would assume relevance in all cultures. Though the tales can be considered part of a German nationalist movement in the nineteenth century, they were also related to tales from many other nations, and this relationship accounts for their international appeal today.

Seventh Edition

Once upon a time there was a husband and wife who for quite some time had been wishing in vain for a child. Finally, the dear Lord gave the wife a sign of hope that their wish would be fulfilled. Now, in the back of their house the couple had a small window that overlooked a splendid garden filled with the most beautiful flowers and herbs. The garden, however, was surrounded by a high wall, and nobody dared enter it because it belonged to a sorceress, who was very powerful and feared by all.

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