4th January 1785 saw the birth of one of one of
world’s greatest story-tellers, Jacob Grimm. Together with his younger brother
Wilhelm (born in 1786) he collected and retold a large number of folktales that
would almost certainly have been lost without their efforts.
The Grimms and their fairy tales
The first collection was published in 1812 as “Childrens and
Household Tales”, which makes the point that they were not solely intended to
be read by or to children. This is sometimes forgotten when it is complained
that the tales are “Grimm by name and grim by nature”.
The collection was originally intended as an academic
exercise looking into some of the more obscure aspects of the German language
and its history, which was Jacob Grimm’s main interest in life. However, the
collection simply grew and took on a life of its own. The original volume
contained 86 stories, but a second volume published in 1815 added another 70.
The seventh collected edition, published in 1857, comprised 211 tales.
The stories collected by the Grimms included many that have
become familiar to generations of children ever since, including Cinderella,
Rapunzel, Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. Without the Brothers Grimm it is
unlikely that Walt Disney would have had much material to work on!
Unfortunately, a number of the stories have also been held to embody the ideals
of Germanic racial purity, which is why Adolf Hitler was particularly attracted
to them – and the same might also have applied to Walt Disney.
An unfinished dictionary
Jacob Grimm would not have regarded himself simply as a
storyteller. His most important work, as he saw it, was in the fields of
philology and linguistics. He was a professor of philology and the creator of a
massive dictionary of the German language, on which he worked alongside his
brother. Wilhelm died in 1859 when they were still working on words beginning
with “D” and Jacob had only got as far as “F” by the time he died in 1863. The
work was eventually completed by others but did not finally appear until 1960!
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