Grimm Brothers
GRIMM BROTHERS. Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785–1863) and his brother Wilhelm Karl (1786–1859) were born in Hanau, Germany, where their father was town clerk and later Amtmann (local administrator). Their happy childhood ended with his death in 1796; thereafter they had a constant struggle against poverty, with several younger children to support. The brothers worked in close harmony all their lives, and their researches into early Germanic language, literature, antiquities, and religion formed the basis for future studies in these fields.
At the university in Marburg the brothers became interested in medieval literature. The family moved to Kassel, and Jakob worked as a clerk in the War Office and later as secretary to the legation in the war against Napoleon. Finally both brothers were employed in the library of the elector of Hanover. From about 1806 they were collecting popular tales and encouraging their friends to do so, believing that this material, never previously taken seriously by scholars, was essential for the study of Germanic mythology. The first volume of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Household and children's tales) appeared in 1812. The brothers worked unceasingly, reading manuscripts, recording oral material, and continually exploring new fields. They published poems from the Icelandic Eddas, corresponded with Walter Scott (with whom they compared Scottish and Danish ballads), and worked on runic inscriptions and Slavic languages. In 1816 and 1818 they brought out Deutsche Sagen (German legends) taken from printed and oral sources. Jakob concentrated on philology and early law, publishing Deutsche Grammatik (German grammar) in 1819 and Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer (German legal antiquities) in 1828. Wilhelm worked mainly on medieval German literature and the heroic epics, and brought out Die deutschen Heldensagen (The German heroic sagas) in 1829.
At first they refused teaching posts, but unsympathetic treatment by the elector forced Jakob to become professor of philology at Göttingen in 1830; Wilhelm joined him there and proved a brilliant lecturer. Wilhelm married Dorothea Wild in 1825; it was a happy marriage, and Jakob continued to live with his brother and sister-in-law. In 1835 Jakob published Deutsche Mythologie (Germanic mythology), which established the link between German and Scandinavian myth and led to a new interest in Germanic antiquity throughout Europe. Many English students came to Göttingen, among them the Anglo-Saxon scholar John Kemble. However, once more the brothers had to leave when the reactionary duke of Cumberland became king of Hanover.
They were invited to work in Saxony on a comprehensive dictionary of the German language, and when the liberal Friedrich Wilhelm became king of Prussia in 1840 he persuaded them to move to Berlin, to live in financial security and lecture at the university and the academy. This meant a great change in their lives, but a happy one, and both brothers worked indefatigably until the end, Jakob surviving Wilhelm by four years. By their lives of devoted scholarship they made a major contribution to the serious study of folk tales and comparative mythology, and showed how language could be studied scientifically as a means of exploring humankind's early religious beliefs.
Bibliography
Denecke, Ludwig. Jacob Grimm und sein Bruder Wilhelm. Stuttgart, 1971.
Grimm, Jakob. Deutsche Mythologie. Göttingen, 1835. Translated from the fourth edition as Teutonic Mythology, 4 vols., and edited by James Steven Stallybrass (1966; reprint, Gloucester, Mass., 1976).
Grimm's Fairy Tales. Translated by Francis P. Magoun, Jr., and Alexander H. Krappe. Carbondale, Ill., 1960.
Michaelis-Jena, Ruth. The Brothers Grimm. London, 1970.
New Sources
Haase, Donald. The Reception of Grimms' Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions. Detroit, 1993.
Kamenetsky, Christa. The Brothers Grimm & Their Critics: Folktales and the Quest for Meaning. Athens, 1992.
McGlathery, James M. The Brothers Grimm and Folktale. Urbana, 1988.
Zipes, Jack David. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World. New York, 1988.
This is the complete article, containing 612 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
