The Brothers Grimm

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 The Brothers Grimm

So many of the stories we learn as children can be traced to the collection compiled by the Brothers Grimm. In fact, the Grimms are a household name and have come to represent the creators of fairy tales, though they didn't write any of the tales found in their compilation. They were not authors, they were story tellers, and they may have perfected the art. If you have ever heard of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and so, so, many more, you have entered the world of the Brothers Grimm.

What you may not know about the Brothers Grimm is that they were two of the most important German scholars of their time. Their contributions to schlarship regarding folklore and linguistics is instrumental to the modern understanding of the subjects. They collected stories, we know, but they also collected songs and poems and researched the history of the modern languages. There is  even a law named after them: Grimm's Law. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were the oldest of six children. Their father, who died when the boys were young, was a lawyer and this was originally the plan of the two boys as well. The Napoleonic Wars that swept Hesse, a region of present day Germany, changed these plans, however. Influenced by many thinkers of their time, they set about different careers but ultimately both landed in the research of literature. Jacob served the Hessian government and served as the librarian to the king of Westphalia and even went to France to collect manuscripts and artwork taken by Napoleon before his defeat. He eventually met Wilhelm in Kassel where they persued their interest in the literary traditions of the world. But that is what we probably didn't know.

What we probably do know about the Brothers Grimm is that they collected and published folklore--or fairy tales. Grimm's Fairy Tales, as it is known in English, was published in 1812. In the original German, it is called Kinder- und Hausmärchen. This collection of tales is their most famous work and serves as the outline for all folk and fairy tale collections to this day. In this publication, they outlined the anatomy of a folktale for the first time in history. They included their notes on the works included in the collection which leant the book a scholarly and scientific approach. Considering that they studied these stories from a scientific angle, that makes sense.

The Kinder- und Hausmärchen may be their most enduring work, but it is certainly not their only. They published collections of solely German stories and Irish tales, all while continuing to collect folklore from across Europe. Their scholarship was and is integral to the modern understanding of folklore and languages, and their collections are some of the most important in enduring literature.

I doubt there are many if any of us that have not heard of at least one Grimm fairy tale, no matter the adaptation. In fact, it is the adaptations that make the stories what they are in the modern world. Film, music, the written word, performing and visual arts and so many more creative mediums have claimed these stories as their building blocks. So much of the media that we have today would not exist were it not for the dissemination of these stories to the masses. Kinder- und Hausmärchen has been translated into more than 160 languages--it is one of the most translated books of all time. 

The Brothers Grimm are indelibly tied to their collection, so much so that they have become characters in and of themselves. Biography, fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction--each genre has taken a different spin on the story of the Brothers Grimm. They are just as interesting, intriguing, and adaptable to the modern reader as the characters in the stories they collected. As far as story tellers go, they are tops.

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